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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 


PRINCETON, N. J. 





PURCHASED BY THE HAMILL MISSIONARY FUND. 





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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


LANDS OF 


THE THUNDERBOLT 
SIKHIM, CHUMBI & BHUTAN 
32 Illustrations and a Map 


‘* This book is a narrative of travel, but 
it is more. It is for a great part a 
thoughtful, well-informed, and peculiarly 
sympathetic account of the particular 
form which Buddhism has taken among 
these strong-natured mountain peoples.” — 
Geographical Journal. 

‘*' The whole book is written in a spirit 
of thoughtful enquiry. It passes from 
grave to gay and gives us a good deal of 
information in an attractive form supple- 
mented with some excellent illustrations.” 
—Times Literary Supplement. 

‘*This is indeed a wonderful travel 
book.” —Morning Post. 


INDIA 
A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


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Plate r, 


THE IMAGE OF THE SUN GOD AT KONARAK, 
(See page 257.) 





A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


BY THE 


EARL OF RONALDSHAY 
BOTGCsleG.C.E: 


HON, D.LITT. CALCUTTA 5 HON, D.L. DACCA } HON. D.LITT. LEEDS 
PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 


AUTHOR OF 
‘sPORT AND POLITICS UNDER AN EASTERN SKY’; ‘ON THE OUTSKIRTS 
OF EMPIRE IN ASIA’; ‘A WANDERING STUDENT IN THE FAR EAST’; 
‘AN EASTERN MISCELLANY, AND ‘LANDS OF THE THUNDERBOLT ’ 


° 





BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 


First Published 1924 
Second Inipression 1924 


Printed in Great Britain by R. & R. CLARK, Limited, Edinburgh. 


PREFACE 


I am often asked by persons wishing to know 
something of India what they should read. The 
answer is not so simple as might be supposed, 
for India can be viewed from so many different 
angles. Experience suggests, however, that what 
the majority require, particularly those con- 
templating a visit to India whether for business 
or for pleasure, is something in the nature of a 
bird’s-eye view. They want more than a mere 
narrative of travel, however vivid the pen pictures 
which it contains and however graphic the de- 
scription of the experiences of which it tells, and 
something less than the studies of specialists 
which treat with a weight of technical knowledge 
which alarms if it does not repel, of particular 
aspects of the case. And it is a bird’s-eye view, 
therefore, that I have set myself to present. 

This phrase is not, of course, to be interpreted 
too literally, since descriptions of the actual 
scenery and outward appearance of peoples and 
buildings occupy but a small part of the whole. 
Such a picture would fall short of what is de- 
manded. Man with his capacity for accumu- 
lating records of events, from which has developed 
his historical sense ; with his gift of imagination, 
whence he derives his enjoyment of aesthetic 

Vv 


vi INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


values; with his adaptation of himself to his 
environment as displayed generally by the control 
which he exercises over nature and in particular 
by his industries and commerce ;_ with his specu- 
lative faculty which has given birth to his philo- 
sophies ; man, in short, with his varied outlook 
upon the universe demands a picture of more 
than the mere outward appearance of things, 
The bird’s-eye view which he requires is a mosaic 
of diverse pieces—a composition of historical, 
pictorial, statistical, and ethnographical vignettes. 

This then is what I have tried to do—to bring 
together vignettes of Indian history ; glimpses of 
Indian architecture and archaeology; sketches 
of the social and industrial economy of her 
peoples ; indications of the modes in which their 
religious thought has found expression ;_ illustra- 
tions of their unceasing war with their environ- 
ment, particularly in the matter of climate and 
disease—to construct a mosaic which will present 
to the man who wishes to know something of 
this huge and varied land, whose recent history 
has been bound up so intimately with his own, 
an intelligible conspectus. 

The pages which follow are concerned for the 
most part with external things, for one must 
acquire familiarity with that which lies open to 
one’s gaze before one can hope—or, indeed, before 
one is likely even to desire—to probe beneath the 
surface. ‘The final chapters are an exception to 
this general statement, for in them I have touched 
upon one aspect of the inner life of India. I have 
done so because the particular belief to which I 
have therein alluded—that in reincarnation and 
its cause—is universal among the Hindus and 


PREFACE vii 


colours their whole outlook upon life. No volume, 
therefore, which aims at giving a faithful picture 
of India would be complete without some reference 
~ to it. Elsewhere I have written of one of the 
most powerful influences which have gone to: 
fashion the Indian outlook upon life—the teach- 
ing of Sidartha Gautama, the Lord Buddha.} 
The subject-matter of the final chapters of the 
present volume is complementary to much that 
is contained in the latter, for they set forth the 
Indian theory concerning the past and the future 
of man—the theory of a pitiless and inexorable 
repetition of existence, an ever-recurring cycle of 
birth, old age, death, and re-birth, from which it 
was Buddha’s mission upon earth to seek and to 
find an avenue of escape. Of both volumes it 
may be said, therefore, that they conduct the 
reader to the threshold of another world—the 
world of thought as distinct from the objective 
world of experience. There for the time being I 
leave him. [If he is tempted to push his explora- 
tion across the threshold into this unfamiliar but 
fascinating world, these two volumes may be of 
assistance in equipping him for his journey. If, 
on the other hand, he is content to confine his 
journeyings to the broader highways of more 
familiar country, the pages which follow will, I 
hope, prove adequate to his purpose. To assist 
him in picturing the scenes of which they tell, I 
have made a selection from a number of photo- 
graphs which I have taken at various times in 
different parts of India. 

In one or two places I have availed myself of 
the permission granted me by the editors of the 

1 In ** Lands of the Thunderbolt,”’ Messrs. Constable & Co., 1923. 


Vili INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


‘Nineteenth Century and After” and of the 
‘“EKmpire Review,” to reproduce matter which 
has already appeared in those publications. The 
greater part of Chapter XIV. was originally written 
as a contribution to the January number of the 
former in 1928, while certain passages touching 
upon the life and teaching of Buddha were in- 
cluded in an article in the September issue of the 
latter during the same year. And I gladly take 
this opportunity of acknowledging my indebted- 
ness to their respective editors for the courtesy 
which they have thus shown me. 
RONALDSHAY. 


January 1924 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 


Wuar is INnpiaA? : : : ; : 1 


CHAPTER II 


First IMPRESSIONS ; , ‘ ; : 13 


CHAPTER III 


Wuat THE BUILDINGS HAVE TO TELL ; : y 24. 


CHAPTER IV 


Tue Nortru-West Frontier : i A i 4.0 


CHAPTER V 


AN Historic Higuway . . f ; : 52 


CHAPTER VI 


Tue ProBLEM OF THE FRONTIER. : , ; 62 


CHAPTER VII 


THe ProBLeM oF THE FRONTIER (continued) Aare ey () 


CHAPTER VIII 


Tue Turrp ArGHaN War AND ITs AFTERMATH . ‘ 87 


ix 


x INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


CHAPTER IX 


PAGE 
Tue INcuRSION OF THE WEST ; : ; Cr Oe 


CHAPTER X 


Tue Imprint oF GreaT BRITAIN : ; PES Oe fs 


CHAPTER XI 


LocaL SELF-GOVERNMENT ‘ : ; Seta 


CHAPTER XII 


Tue Inp1aN VILLAGE ‘ f : ; ya aed 


CHAPTER XIII 


Tue INDUSTRIALISM OF THE WEsT ft ; Meoeiet 54 8 | 


CHAPTER XIV 


WeaLtu, ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL y : Se kOe 


CHAPTER XV 


THe Lure oF THE PRIMITIVE : é i . 184 


CHAPTER XVI 


JUNGLE LIFE . ? ; ‘ t i O7O8 


CHAPTER XVII 


PicTuREs FROM AN EvHNic PAGEANT . : Oe 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Tue Incursion oF IsLam : j . . 214 


CONTENTS xl 


CHAPTER XIX 


PAGE 
_ [stam in Inpia . ; . , ‘ (abo 


CHAPTER XX 


Tue Rexticious Quest or INDIA . : ; . 248 


CHAPTER XXI 


Poputar HINpvuIsM : ; ; : HR ib 


CHAPTER XXII 


PEssIMISM AND ITs CAUSES 


The Physical Cause . i : : » 275 


CHAPTER XXIII 


PEssIMISM AND ITs Causks 
The Intellectual Cause : , L . 290 


CHAPTER XXIV 


PEssIMISM AND ITs CAUSES 
The Intellectual Cause (continued) : ; gs 


INDEX . : ; : : : , Ske 


id 
AF 


my Po Neer , 


Pt 


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BER Weds doy VEteat Ma 

2 ane s Ra it <9 

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ILLUSTRATIONS 


. The Image of the Sun God at Konarak . Frontispiece 
. The Pearl Mosque at Delhi . ; Baie Sie 
. A Cave Temple at Ellora , = eran 
. A Dravidian Temple : ; SED 
. Rock Sculpture at Mamallapuram . PROBS 
. The Khyber Pass. 58 
. Moghul Architecture: The Bniuiioe to the Gandel of 
the Taj Mahal . : : : Spang 
. A Group of Temples at Bhubaneswar in Orissa . 104 
. The Palace at Kotah : . ks 
. Cave Chapter-halls of the Buddhists : at Ellora rnd 8: 
. Village Craftsmen: The Potter . 146 
. Marble Ceiling of a Jain Temple at Mount nes eee 
. Temples hewn out of the Rock at Khandagiri in 
Orissa. : Me Wie: 
. The Religious Life of India . ; *) 182 
. The Indian Forest . ; ; . 186 
. The Forest of the Terai : ; yetZ00 
. A Criminal Tribe Settlement at Meranaal ; . 204 
. The Dilwara Temple on Mount Abu ; es Le 
. The Juma Masjid at Delhi . ; , ae 
. A Hindu Ascetic. , ~) a2 
. The Chariot of the Sun at Konarak : . (258 
. A Sadhu on a Bed of Spikes at Puri . . 264 
. A Religious Mendicant 4 1,292 
. Disciples of Buddha. ' ; gt 2 a 
Map : ‘ : At End of Volume 


Xili 


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PPA Oka ke Cady g 
OAL 





CHAPTER I 
WHAT IS INDIA ? 


In attempting to give a description of India 
which will possess a reasonable degree of interest 
for the general reader, it is a little difficult to 
know how much to take for granted. What sort 
of picture does the average man conjure up when 
he thinks of India? When he does so is it with 
a conscious knowledge, for example, that of the 
440,000,000 of British citizens who constitute 
the British Empire 320,000,000 are Indians? Or 
that in spite of Great Britain’s far-flung dominions 
in five continents, the loss of India would mean a 
shrinkage in the Empire from 13,250,000 to less 
than 11,500,000 square miles? Is his picture 
anything more than a smudge of red upon the 
map of Asia ? 

By a curious chance the first debate which I 
ever attended as a member of the House of 
Commons was the annual debate on the Indian 
budget, when a desultory discussion took place 
upon what struck me as the rather bewildering 
motion, that Mr. Speaker should leave the chair. 
The principal participant was the Secretary of 
State, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Morley. And to 
any one impressed with the magnitude of the 
task which Parliament had undertaken towards 
320,000,000 British subjects of India when it had 
assumed responsibility for their good government, 
his opening words were as startling as they were 

1 B 


2 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


picturesque. ‘‘ The Indian Secretary,” he re- 
marked, ‘“‘ is like the aloe which blooms once in 
a hundred years, for he only troubles the House 
with speeches of his own once in twelve months.”’ 

It is not so very long ago that Sir John 
Strachey wrote that the first and most essential 
fact that could be learned about India was that 
there was no such country. It is unlikely that 
he propounded so profound a paradox merely for 
the sake of being paradoxical. He was anxious 
to dispel a popular and perfectly intelligible 
error, namely, that of the man who, when he 
thought on India, visualised it as a country like 
Great Britain instead of as a continent like 
Kurope. The analogy presented by Europe is 
not an exact one, but it is sufficiently near the 
mark to serve the purpose of one. The author 
of the report on the Indian census of 1911, while 
insisting on the necessity of regarding India as a 
continent, or collection of different countries, did 
so half apologetically on the ground that the 
remark was “ trite.’’ It may be so to those who 
habitually study Indian official publications. The 
average man does not; and nine people out of 
ten still talk of the People of India when they 
mean the peoples of that continent. One may 
quote statistics, then, without being charged with 
pedantry. 

For a start, imagine a region the size of all 
Kurope exclusive only of Russia, stretching over 
twenty-eight degrees of latitude and forty degrees 
of longitude, with a population of 320,000,000 
practising nine great religions and speaking 130 
different dialects belonging to six distinct families 
of speech. That is India looked at from the 
point of view of the statistician. But statistics 
are dry bones. If they are startling, as Indian 
statistics are, they merely bewilder; if they are 
commonplace they leave one cold. If their mean- 


WHAT IS INDIA ? 3 


ing is to be grasped they must be seen clothed 
with flesh and blood. And that means hard and 
extensive travelling. When within the space of 
“a few months, for instance, one has been brought 
into contact with the business-like Parsi of 
Bombay, the indolent and easy-going Burman, 
the courtly and cultured Brahman of Southern 
India, the primitive Kohl or Bhil of the jungles 
of Central India, the emotional and _ subtle- 
minded inhabitant of the towns of Bengal, the 
cheery hill-man of the Eastern Himalayas, the 
great landholders of the United Provinces and 
the Punjab, the proud aristocracy of Rajputana, 
the wild Afridi of the North-West Frontier and 
the picturesque chieftain of Baluchistan, then it 
is that statistics as to race and language begin to 
assume definite meaning and reality. 

Wise men tell one that it is impossible to 
generalise about India; and in the main the wise 
men are doubtless right. One does not general- 
ise about Europe, and in some respects Europe is 
more homogeneous than India. And, indeed, it 
does not require a man of outstanding wisdom to 
tell one that in the case of a region stretching 
over forty degrees of longitude and twenty-eight 
degrees of latitude, generalisations are only likely 
to hold good, subject to large qualifications. 
Nevertheless there are certain rough generalisa- 
tions which may be made. Thus it may be said 
that India is essentially an agricultural country, 
and the correctness of such an assertion cannot 
be disputed. Seventy-two per cent of the popu- 
lation, or approximately 219,000,000, are depend- 
ent upon agriculture in one form or another for 
their livelihood. The population as a whole lives 
in small country towns and villages. There are 
in the whole of the huge continent less than 750 
towns with a population of 10,000, and only 
thirty towns with a population of 100,000 and 


4 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


upwards. And the general accuracy of the state- 
ment is not invalidated by the fact that in 
Calcutta and Bombay India possesses the second 
and third cities of the British Empire. 

Again, take the case of climate. It may be 
said in a general way that India is a hot country ; 
and the fact that there are parts of India where 
cold weather is experienced during certain seasons, 
and other parts where a winter of almost arctic 
severity prevails, does not disprove the general 
contention. If India were not a hot country, it 
is unlikely that her people would consume round 
about 2,000,000 miles of cotton cloth every year, 
as in point of fact they do. In the year 1913-14 
they took from the looms of Great Britain alone 
over 1,750,000 miles of grey, white, and coloured 
cloth. 

The assertion may also be ventured that as a 
general rule the outstanding characteristic of 
Muhammadan architecture is its simple grandeur 
of outline, its purity, and its stateliness, while 
Hindu architecture is characterised by an amaz- 
ing exuberance of ornamentation and an elaborate 
intricacy of design. While there is a suggestion 
of austerity about the one, there is often a hint 
almost of meretriciousness about the other. 

Lastly, in the domain of philosophic thought it 
is undoubtedly the case that, excepting in those 
regions which are dominated by the creed of 
Islam, the doctrine of Karma and Transmigra- 
tion—of which more later—exercises an almost 
universal sway. 

These are generalisations, and they are un- 
questionably true. But having made them by 
way of protest against a too rigid interpretation 
of the statement that one cannot generalise about 
India, let me hasten to add that I subscribe to 
it on the whole. I recognise fully the amazing 
diversity of the continent; and, indeed, it is 





THE PEARL MOSQUE AT DELHI. 


6 |, the outstanding characteristic of Muhammadan architecture is its simple grandeur of 


” 


outline, its purity and its stateliness... 









R | nM 
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| a patie hy ae i ‘@ { 
ah 3 -, hae ny is 
DTP aS a 47 « | pot ae: 
im s8 1 ea Ve 
’ “a * ra 7 
ae ah ue 





WHAT IS INDIA ? 5 


to this very diversity, presenting as 1t does such 
rich studies in contrast, that is attributable no 
“small part of its singular charm. 

Take an example. There are in North-West 
India, both east and west of the Indus as it makes 
its way across the plains towards the sea, great 
tracts of desolation. In particular there is the 
Daman—a dusty stretch of sun-scorched wilder- 
ness running from the Indus banks to the 
mountains which rise tier upon tier from the edge 
of the trans-Indus plains to the highlands of 
Afghanistan. There are probably many similar 
tracts in the North-West Frontier Province and 
in the Punjab, and I merely take the Daman as 
an example, because I happen to have travelled 
across it myself. In the middle of it stands Dera 
Ismael Khan, and away to the west, at the foot 
of the first mountain range, a small frontier post 
near the mouth of the Gomal Pass, called Tank. 
The light railway which now connects these two 
places had not then been built, and apart from 
these two symptoms of human existence I can 
recall little but an impression of desolation 
triumphant. It is an unlovely patch of Nature 
at her crudest—hard, staring, and blistered by 
the sun. The most poignant sensation which a 
contemplation of it excites in the mind is that of 
unquenchable thirst. In the Daman “ men drink 
once a day, and the cattle every second day. 
Washing is an impossible luxury.”+ It might 
easily be imagined that such a land would excite 
nothing but feelings of repulsion. Yet, curiously 
enough, this is not so. With all their disabilities 
these waste places possess an attraction which 
the traveller who is familiar with the desert 
unexpectedly finds inherent in it. Perhaps it is 
due to an exhilarating sense of freedom which 
is produced by an ever receding and apparently 


1 Captain Crostwaite. 


6 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


limitless horizon. Perhaps, too, the untainted 
atmosphere reacts favourably upon one’s physical 
organism, whilst the great cool silence of night 
descending like balm upon a weary and jaded 
spirit is responsible for a feeling of strange 
content. Certainly the gold and crimson glory 
of the sunset or the graceful symmetry of the 
palm tree of an occasional oasis, silhouetted 
darkly against the westerning sky, afford generous 
response to one’s aesthetic cravings. Probably it 
is a combination of all these things that redeems 
the character conventionally given to the desert. 

This, however, is somewhat beside the point. 
My object for the moment is to present a picture 
of Indian scenery typical of large areas of the 
continent where the annual rainfall does not 
exceed three or four inches, and then to remind 
the reader that it is in this same India that he 
must seek for the wettest climate on earth. At 
Cherapungi in the Khasia hills in Assam the 
normal annual rainfall is little short of 450 inches. 
In the year 1899 the rain gauge there recorded 
641 inches, including a fall of over 150 inches in 
the month of June alone. On the 14th of June 
1876 over 40 inches of rain fell at the same place 
in the course of twenty-four hours. In Assam 
and Bengal generally there are over ninety re- 
cording stations with an annual fall of more than 
100 inches. In Baluchistan, on the other hand, 
out of a total of sixty-one recording stations nine 
only show an annual average of 10 inches and 
upwards, the highest figure reached being at 
Shahrig in Thal Choliali, where a fall of 124 inches 
may be expected in the course of a twelvemonth, 
and the lowest at Jhatput, where 3 inches is as 
much as can be counted on in any one year. At 
Cherapungi rain falls in a normal year on one 
hundred and sixty-one days; at Jhatput on six 
days only. 


WHAT IS INDIA ? 7 


A further aid towards realising the magnitude 
of the contrast afforded by different parts of the 
Indian continent is provided by the forestry 
statistics. In the North-West Frontier Province 
and in Baluchistan the areas under forest amount 
to 1-8 per cent and to 1-4 per cent of the re- 
spective provinces; in Assam to 44:5 per cent, 
and in Burma to 64-4 per cent. To which may 
be added the figures of the annual output of 
timber and fuel, amounting for Baluchistan to 
254,000 cubic feet, for Assam to 13,445,000 cubic 
feet, and for Burma to 100,775,000 cubic feet.} 
One would have to travel far before finding else- 
where a parallel to such contrasts in the physical 
conditions even of a continent. 

Nor is the contrast between the peoples at 
each end of the civilised scale less striking than 
that between the tropic luxuriance of one part of 
India and the sterile aridity of another. In the 
peoples of India is to be found an ethnologic 
pageant epitomising the gradual growth of civilisa- 
tion through centuries of time. At one end of 
the scale are men of the finest culture who have 
reached dizzy heights in the realms of speculative 
thought; at the other, men whose religion has 
not yet outgrown the stage of the crudest super- 
stition. At this end the bow and arrow repre- 
sents the highest achievement in the domain of 
mechanical invention; at the other we are pre- 
sented with the spectacle of an Indian scientist 
contriving and constructing apparatus of such 
*“ exquisite refinement ”’? as to excite the aston- 
ished admiration of the scientists of the West. 
It is, indeed, a long way from the bow and arrow 
of the aboriginal Kohl or the primitive plough of 
the Indian peasant to the “‘ Resonant Recorder ”’ 
of Sir Jagadis Bose, recording automatically 


1 Figures for the year 1918-19. 
2 The words are those of Professor Patrick Geddes. 


8 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


measurements of time as short as a thousandth 
part of a second. 

What has been said hitherto is sufficient to 
show the falsity of any attempted analogy 
between India and any one of the countries of 
Kurope, and has indicated tentatively that a 
nearer analogy would be that between India and 
Kurope as a whole. It remains to point out the 
limitations to which even this latter attempt at 
comparison is necessarily subject. The most 
pronounced characteristic which distinguishes one 
Kuropean country from another is undoubtedly 
language. That is to say, the boundaries of the 
different States of Europe coincide generally with 
a line where the language spoken by the people 
of one of the coterminous states ceases and the 
tongue common to the subjects of the other begins. 
In India the boundaries of the different countries, 
or provinces, are purely arbitrary. They are 
based neither on linguistic nor on ethnological 
considerations. They are either purely accidental 
or are based, broadly speaking, on grounds of 
administrative convenience. This has been strik- 
ingly illustrated in recent years by the way in 
which the boundaries of huge provinces have 
been swept away and set up elsewhere by the 
mere stroke of an official pen. In 1905 the 
Government of India took a large slice out of 
the huge territory known as the Presidency of 
Bengal, welded the severed portion with the 
adjacent territory of Assam, built it a capital 
and endowed it with a Government, and the new 
province of Eastern Bengal and Assam came into 
being. In 1912 the greater part of the new 
province, which had made great progress during 
the short term of its independent existence, be- 
came once more the victim of an official ipse dixit, 
and was reincorporated in the presidency, while, 
as a result of the facile removal of other land- 


WHAT IS INDIA ? 9 


marks on the west, the new province of Bihar 
and Orissa was created. On the other side of 
India another example is provided by the North- 
“West Frontier Province, which was carved out of 
the Punjab by Lord Curzon’s Government in 1901. 

I am not here concerned with the fierce contro- 
versies which raged round these reorderings of 
the map. I merely mention them as illustrations 
of the artificial nature of the constitution of the 
different provinces of India. It may, indeed, be 
urged with some force that the arbitrary character 
of the divisions is inevitable, for it would be 
practically impossible to devise a scheme under 
which the peninsula could be divided up on an 
ethnological or linguistic basis. This becomes 
clear when it is remembered that the successive 
waves of immigrant stock with which the con- 
tinent is largely peopled have been controlled by 
peculiar geographical conditions. The vast moun- 
tain system of the Himalayas has formed a 
formidable barrier between India and the rest of 
Asia. Invasion, when it has taken place, has 
followed the path of least resistance, and has 
poured through narrow passages in the mountain 
barrier. These occur mainly in the north-west, 
and each successive stream of invasion, after 
pouring through the defiles in the mountains, has 
spread fan-like over the plains which stretch 
away far and wide from their foot. For the 
same reason each successive tide of invasion has 
flown over the same ground, leaving its impress 
upon the whole sphere of its influence without 
obliterating the racial deposits of earlier inunda- 
tions. A confused medley has been the result, 
which is strikingly illustrated by the present 
distribution of language. Hindi, for instance, is 
widely spoken in five different provinces in British 
India, as well as in two large groups of native 
states ; but though widely spoken, it is only one 


10 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


of the languages spoken in each. The Central 
Provinces and Berar is one of the five provinces 
in question, and eight other languages are spoken 
by appreciable portions of its inhabitants. Assam 
furnishes a remarkable example of linguistic 
heterogeneity. Here nearly half the people speak 
Bengali and one-fifth Assamese, while the re- 
maining two-fifths speak ninety-eight different 
tongues, each of the following being spoken by a 
fraction not less than one per cent of the popula- 
tion: Hindi, Manipuri, Bodo, Naga, Khasi, 
Garo, Mihir, Mundari, and Lushei. One may 
venture to doubt whether such confusion of 
tongues can be paralleled even by the classic 
example of linguistic promiscuity. 

But it is when we come to the political position 
that the analogy with Europe fails altogether. 
When the British came to India they found a 
land torn with internal strife. Inter-state war 
with its inevitable tendency towards disintegra- 
tion was the normal condition of the peninsula ; 
peace with her sister progress was abnormal. So 
it had been for generations. If we try to form 
a mental picture of Indian history we see a con- 
fused procession of kingdoms taking shape and 
dissolving again after the manner of the changing 
mosaics of a kaleidoscope. Here and there great 
figures stand out—the founders of dynasties or 
the architects of kingdoms—marking the flight 
of monarchies fugitive across the centuries. At 
one moment we pause breathless in our review, 
dazzled by the magnificence of some unusually 
brilliant reign; at the next we find ourselves con- 
templating the ruins of all this greatness subsiding 
amid a welter of anarchy and confusion. In the 
fourth century B.c. Chandragupta and in the 
third century Asoka arrest our gaze—the former 
famous for his achievement in wresting an empire 
from the generals of Alexander, the latter for his 


WHAT IS INDIA ? 11 


patronage of Buddhism, which gave it the im- 
petus resulting in its becoming one of the greatest 
religions of the world. In the second, fourth, and 
seventh centuries A.D. we catch passing glimpses 
of great sovereigns in Kanishka, Samudragupta, 
and Harsha; and in the eighth century we 
witness the rise of the celebrated warrior clans 
of the Rajputs, destined to leave so deep an im- 
press upon the fortunes of Hindustan. During 
the centuries of their dominion Buddhism was 
attacked and vanquished by Hinduism, which now 
attained its golden age and reached the acme of 
its speculative greatness in the persons of Sankara 
and Ramanuja, the famous commentators on the 
Vedanta system of philosophy. Yet scarcely 
have we grasped something of the meaning and 
the greatness of the Rajput sway than we become 
aware of new forces pouring through the narrow 
portals of the North-West Frontier, conquering, 
slaying, and proselytising, assailing Hinduism 
with the fierce fanaticism inspired by a new mono- 
theistic and vigorously militant creed. With the 
Muhammadan conquests in India we inevitably 
associate the fierce figure of Mahmid of Gazni 
in the eleventh century and the gorgeous epoch 
of the Moghul dynasty, whose stately palaces 
and tombs remain to this day, bearing silent 
witness to the glories of their reign. Towards 
the close of the Moghul period we see the rise of 
the Marathas of the Deccan, and once more we 
witness the spectacle, so familiar in the long 
history of India, of a great empire sinking to 
impotence and finally disappearing from the 
annals of the land. 

Romance there is in plenty to colour these 
fleeting pictures of the mind; but if we base our 
impressions on hard fact it is War, the fruit of 
fierce and striving ambition and of the clash of 
rival creeds, that casts its shadow over the whole, 


12 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


and like some spectral showman ushers across 
the stage, kingdom after kingdom in an ever- 
recurring cycle of birth and death, greatness and 
impotence, growth and decay. 

Nor does the early period of European ascend- 
ancy in the Hast differ in this respect from the 
eras which preceded it. Spain and Portugal, 
France, Holland, and Great Britain fought fiercely 
for dominion, and it was not until a single Power 
emerged triumphant from the contending nations 
that a decisive hour in the history of India 
struck. Great Britain achieved what numberless 
competitors through past ages had striven for in 
vain—the hegemony of the continent. 

To this position we can find no analogy. We 
must be content to regard it as unique, and to 
examine it as we find it—a vast experiment in 
the science of government being carried on before 
our eyes in the strangely equipped laboratory of 
the East, in a manner and on a scale never before 
contemplated and for which no precedents can 
be invoked. This is India from the most interest- 
ing and at the same time the most fateful point 
of view. 


CHAPTER II 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 


One’s first impressions of India are usually 
formed at Bombay; and no more lovely gate- 
house to the wonderful land to which it gives 
entrance could be wished for than the verdant 
city, encircling the blue waters of its splendid 
harbour. In the streets of the city itself one 
scarcely notices the trees; but look down upon 
it as it lies spread out like a map beneath you 
from some point of vantage upon Malabar Hill, 
and it is the buildings that shrink into the back- 
eround, lost in a green bower of trees. 

It was in the winter of 1898—99 that I first set 
foot in Bombay, two years after plague had made 
its sinister appearance in the land and before the 
Improvement Trust had got to work upon its 
beneficent task of cleansing and reconstructing 
the city. What the advent of this scourge meant 
to India may be dimly imagined from a bald 
statement of the number of deaths caused by it, 
amounting to 10,500,000 in something less than a 
quarter of a century. 

My impressions formed then were those of the 
average cold-weather visitor, and it was not until 
some years later that I discovered a side of 
Bombay which does not usually impress itself 
upon the casual visitor, a side of the city which 
provides a picture harder in outline and darker in 
hue than that aspect of it which, with its rich 

13 


14 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


colouring and attractive novelty, catches the eye 
of the traveller, grim but substantial and full 
of a solid material reality, the characteristics of 
modern industrial progress. Of this picture I 
then saw only the shadow in a heavy pall of 
smoke-haze that hung like a curtain over the land 
across the bay. And I was but dimly conscious 
of the fact that behind that murky curtain there 
lived and laboured a vast industrial community 
whose pulses throbbed to the ceaseless whirr of 
the spindle and the palpitating crash of the loom. 
I had occasion later to visit some of the great 
cotton mills which have brought wealth and 
squalor hand in hand to the city, and a mere stroll 
through the damp and enervating atmosphere 
which pervades them was enough to explain and 
justify the agitation which arose early in the 
present century for factory legislation. 

On the occasion of my first visit I went in 
company with other visitors to see the sights: 
the markets and the polyglot crowd that fre- 
quented them, the Arab stables, the Towers of 
Silence, and the Caves of Elephanta. Before the 
Great War cut off the supply from the Persian 
Gulf, the Arab stables were certainly a feature of 
the city, for neither in Asia nor in Europe could 
one have found their counterpart. This was, in 
fact, the one and only market in existence for the 
sale and purchase of this famous breed. There 
were 3000 ponies in the stables when I visited 
them, one dealer alone possessing a fine racing 
string of seventy-five animals. According to the 
dealers—fine, upstanding men of Arabia, of proud 
and dignified bearing—a flea-bitten grey was 
the most highly prized of all, such ponies having 
the reputation of being the quietest and _ best 
of the breed. 

The Towers of Silence necessarily attract the 
attention of the newcomer on account of the 


FIRST IMPRESSIONS 15 


novelty of the idea of giving over the dead to 
the fowls of the air rather than to the slow 
disintegration of the tomb. Moreover, the Parsi 
community, to which this method of the disposal 
of the dead is peculiar, is small in number and 
is mainly concentrated in Bombay, so that one is 
not likely to come across elsewhere the curious, 
low, circular towers surrounded by trees on whose 
branches groups of vultures brood expectantly. 
If the fluttering of these sombre scavengers as 
they alight on the grating on which the corpse is 
laid causes an involuntary shudder, the peace of 
this strange garden amid the golden light of the 
sunshine, as it brings its great powers of purifica- 
tion to bear on all around, quickly restores one’s 
equanimity. 

A stroll towards sunset on the beach. which 
sweeps in a wide semicircle from Colaba to 
Malabar, reminds the stranger further that he 
has entered a land where the religious uniformity 
of Europe no longer prevails. In the rows of 
attentive figures standing with book in hand, 
gazing earnestly across the waters to the sinking 
sun, he will recognise the devout descendants of 
the faithful followers of Zoroaster, who, through- 
out the weary days of their exodus from the land 
of their birth, kept the sacred fire burning till at 
the end of their wanderings they could establish 
and feed it in the new home of their choice. 

A trip across the waters of the bay to the 
island on which are situated the famous rock- 
cut temples of Elephanta is likewise instructive. 
In the course of it one may see the palatial resi- 
dences of great industrial magnates, reminders of 
the success with which, in Bombay at any rate, 
Indians have imbibed the commercial spirit of 
the West. For unlike Calcutta, where, as one 
discovers later, the immense mills of the jute 
industry are almost exclusively in the hands of 


16 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Europeans, the cotton mills of Bombay are the 
property of Indians. It was a Parsi who built the 
first Indian cotton mill in Bombay in 1854, and 
despite the excise duty upon Indian cotton pro- 
ducts, round which has raged from time to time so 
fierce a controversy, Bombay to-day can boast its 
merchant millionaires. And then one comes to 
Elephanta and its great cave temples—a splendid 
husk of that grain which is of the real fibre and 
substance of India—a thing not of the earth 
earthy, but of the spirit. These cave temples, 
with their splendid columns and their titanic 
sculpture dating back a dozen centuries and more, 
cannot fail to impress even the least instructed 
visitor. But some acquaintance with Indian 
symbolism discloses something of their meaning 
and significance, and enables one to take a 
glimpse into that world which he who seeks to 
understand India must strive to enter—the in- 
tangible world of the spirit, built up through 
the centuries by the powerful religious impulses 
of her peoples. A massive shrine foursquare to 
the cardinal points of the compass, with eight 
guardian figures 15 feet in height, one on either 
side of its four entrances, encloses a symbol which 
later on becomes familiar in connection with 
temples dedicated to Shiva throughout the land, 
the lingam, emblematic of the mysterious repro- 
ductive power of Nature. The shrine itself con- 
taining this emblem stands for the earth and all 
that thereinis. Another great panel of stone repre- 
sents Shiva as the Lord of Creation, engaged in a 
mystical dance, whereby he sets the universe in 
motion. Later, in Southern India, one will come 
across this same conception wonderfully wrought 
by the temple image-makers in bronze, and learn 
something of its deep philosophical significance. 
For the time being one has seen enough to set 
one thinking, even if one is not yet in a position 


“purl 94} NOY Snoryy VAIYS OF pavoipep sejduraz YIM UOD9UUOD UI AvI[IWRy SsWOdEq UO Jaze] YOIYM JoquAS v Saso]OUe * * * 


‘VYOTTY LY ATIWAL ZAVD V 


°E 2D] d 





Ben } 





eo 


FIRST IMPRESSIONS 17 


to appreciate the dictum of Mr. E. B. Havell, 
that the sculpture of Elephanta reflects the lofty 
idealism and intellectuality of the Upanishads. 

% * * % %* 

It is convenient to leave Bombay by night, 
and on stepping into one’s railway carriage one 
realises that one has cause for gratitude to the 
early railway builders in India, who, out of con- 
sideration or caprice, laid their track. on broad 
and generous lines. The 54-foot gauge of the 
greater number of the Indian railways allows of 
a roomy compartment on whose broad seats, 
running lengthwise on either side of the carriage, 
one can spread one’s bedding and lie at ease. 
If the journey is made during the winter months, 
the first night, during which one scales the sides 
of the Ghats Mountains by steep gradients, is 
likely to prove unexpectedly cold after the damp 
heat of Bombay, and a warning to have a thick 
blanket or quilt at hand is one which is well 
worth heeding. 

The disadvantage of leaving Bombay by night 
is that one thereby misses by far the most pictur- 
esque portion of the journey, for after scaling 
the Ghats and emerging on to the plateaux of 
the Indian hinterland one will find little of note 
in the scenery. Hour after hour one travels 
monotonously across a dusty landscape. It 
leaves upon one’s mind the impression of a land 
of vast spaces, and, to the rather fastidious taste 
in rural scenery bred by the trim hedges and 
neatly enclosed fields of Great Britain, it appears 
preposterously untidy. The villages seem to con- 
sist of fortuitous collections of houses of sun-dried 
bricks, thrown together with no regard to the 
modern science of town-planning. They are 
usually half-buried in trees, which, whether 
deciduous by nature or not, always seem to be in 

1 * The Ideals of Indian Art.” 
Cc 


18 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


leaf. This provides us with one of the minor 
contrasts of India, for, except for this unexpected 
behaviour on the part of the trees, greenness in 
any form is the last thing suggested by a winter 
landscape in Central or North-West India. Later 
on, a more leisurely tour through an Indian 
district will enable one to observe large differences 
in the character and construction of these small 
centres of agricultural activity, in precisely the 
same way as a lengthened stay in China proves 
to one the unreliability of one’s first impression 
that all Chinese are exactly alike in physiognomy. 
There are, for example, villages which aspire to 
the dignity conferred by the title “‘ municipality,” 
whose corporate life is ordered by a board com- 
posed of the chief residents, with power to impose 
rates and to take action in a variety of directions 
conducive to the general well-being. I recall an 
attractive example of this type of village-munici- 
pality in the United Provinces, styled an “ Act 
XX. town” I think, a hamlet with a minimum 
population of fifteen hundred, possessing all the 
picturesqueness of a typical Indian village, but 
in addition well-planned streets, surprising tidi- 
ness, and a population the comfortable circum- 
stances of whose lot were plainly apparent. But 
these are features of rural life which cannot, of 
course, be detected from the window of a railway 
carriage. 

The probability is that one’s first impressions, 
induced by what one sees as one travels from 
Bombay to Delhi, let us say, will be vague. The 
glare of the sun outside produces weariness of the 
eye, and the dust with which everything inside 
becomes smothered causes the kind of discomfort 
and annoyance which distracts one’s attention. 
One’s faculty of observation becomes blunted by 
the monotony of the landscape and with ennui 
produced by the petty physical discomfort of 


FIRST IMPRESSIONS 19 


which one is never altogether unconscious. And 
it is only by degrees, after a succession of journeys 
broken by welcome halts at places of special in- 
terest, that one finds that one has arrived at 
certain rough conclusions which seem to be 
capable of more or less general application. The 
train of thought already set in motion at Bombay 
by the spectacle of the religious practices of the 
Parsis is early reinforced by a conspicuous notice 
at the railway stations, which apprises one of the 
fact that drinking-water for Muhammadans and 
Hindus is kept separate. This seems to indicate 
something more than a mere absence of religious 
uniformity ; it suggests a wide gulf between the 
adherents of two great schools of religious thought. 

Another conclusion on a matter which at first 
sight may appear to be somewhat trivial, but 
which later is seen to be of no small importance, 
is that the cow is pressed into the general service 
of Indian humanity, to perform all those tasks 
which are undertaken by the farm-horse in Eng- 
land. Yet another conclusion is forced upon one 
during one’s early days in the land, namely, that 
laughter is singularly rare in the people as a 
whole, that their bearing is characterised rather 
by a submissive sadness, which may easily be 
mistaken for a disagreeable taciturnity. At first 
sight one finds an adequate explanation of this 
latter characteristic in environment. A blistering 
sun, the ever-present spectre of drought leading 
in turn to famine and pestilence, the monotonous 
life of the multitude with its narrow outlook—a 
hard, hand-to-mouth existence, in which the 
morrow holds out no prospect of any mitigation 
of the toil of to-day; all these things, which go 
to make up the sum-total of the average peasant’s 
joys and woes, seem sufficiently well calculated to 
banish inordinate merriment and to give to exist- 
ence the sombre tint of a half-tone engraving. 


20 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


But later on, when one begins to understand the 
mental attitude of the people towards the prob- 
lems of life and death, one realises that one is 
witnessing here one aspect of a peculiar psycho- 
logy which is by no means wholly due to physical 
causes. One discovers here the first signpost 
which directs one to the Indian side of the gulf 
which separates the deeper thought of the Hast 
from that of the West. To the Indian, life is a 
very minute episode in an eternity of existence. 
Behind the present, unnumbered lives stretch 
back into the dim and receding past; ahead lies 
an ever-expanding vista of lives still to come. 
The idea prevalent among Western peoples that 
life is the great present reality to be made the 
most of, and that the future that lies beyond it is 
dim, shadowy, and unrealisable—an abstraction, 
consequently, of little immediate interest or con- 
cern—is altogether alien to the Indian mind. To 
the Hindu peasant all existence in this world is 
suffering and sorrow. His ambition is not to 
prolong it, but to escape from it. Why then, it 
may be asked, does such an outlook upon life 
not lead to suicide on a large scale ? The answer 
is simple. Suicide does not put an end to life ; 
it merely leads to rebirth, and so prolongs it. 
And the nightmare which assails the Hindu is not 
death, but the inexorable recurrence of life. It 
is the perpetual cycle of birth, life, death, and 
rebirth that preys upon his mind, and paints 
existence for him in colours of infinite gloom. 
It is to this problem that the great thinkers of 
India have directed their minds; and the “‘ way 
of emancipation ”’ is the promise of the gospels 
which they have preached to suffering mankind. 
Existence, then, gives little enough cause for re- 
joicing ; but more than this, to find enjoyment in 
life is, in the view of the more extreme schools of 
thought, to draw tighter the cords that bind a 


FIRST IMPRESSIONS 21 


man to it. So certain is this that for the Jain 
ascetic who has renounced the world, laughter is 
a positive sin. “If he laughs even once, some 
punishment will follow, and if he persists in the 
indulgence, it will lead to his rebirth.” } 

But if much time and more thought are re- 
quired before one can begin to form conclusions 
about India, its amazing diversity at least will 
be brought home to one at the very outset of one’s 
investigations if one is prepared to embark upon 
an extensive programme of travel. It is, indeed, 
difficult to give any adequate idea of the wonder- 
ful medley of sensations which crowd themselves 
upon one in the course, for example, of a 
triangular journey from Bombay to the heart of 
the Punjab, thence east across the United Pro- 
vinees and Bihar to Calcutta; from Calcutta to 
Madras and on to the southern apex of the 
peninsula at Tuticorin, and from the Southern 
Presidency back to Bombay across the stony 
highlands of the Deccan. It must be experienced 
to be understood, and no description can serve 
the purpose of anything more than a rough intro- 
duction. Before reaching Delhi or Lahore, one 
may call a halt in order to visit one or more of 
the historic feudatory states of Rajputana, over 
which still hangs the picturesque atmosphere of 
an era of autocracy, fast dissolving on all sides of 
them, under pressure of the democratic tendencies 
of present-day movements in British India. No 
traveller who has once seen them can forget 
the pink-and-white buildings of Jeypore, or the 
cut- glass work and the suggestion of romance 
conjured up by what still survives of the ancient 
city of Amber hard-by ; or the shimmering white 
splendour of the palace at Kotah or the charm of 
its ruler; or again the mediaeval picturesque- 
ness of the little city of Bundi, built steeply and 


1 ** The Heart of Jainism,” by Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson. 


22 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


cunningly in a cleft in a mountain range. Here 
undoubtedly is a link with bygone days; and 
it was altogether in accordance with the fitness 
of things that it should have been the Raja of 
Bundi who, so recently as 1897, appeared at the 
Great Durbar held at Delhi in that year in the 
court-dress of the Moghuls, “‘ to the amazement 
of a generation that had almost entirely forgotten 
the Moghul court and its fashions.” 1! The 
traveller is not likely to have the time or the 
opportunity of visiting more than a few of the 
Native States, but such glimpses as he obtains 
will reveal the existence of an India differing very 
materially from British India and covering as 
much as a third of the Indian continent. 

In the course of such a journey as I have 
suggested, the traveller will discover for himself 
something of the wide range of the climate to 
which reference has been made in the previous 
chapter, for he will pass from the dry and dusty 
plains of the north-west through the intermediate 
zone—half green, half drab—of the United Pro- 
vinces, into the steamy atmosphere and semi- 
tropical vegetation of Bengal. Farther south in 
Madras, he will find the India of his preconceived 
ideas—the land of palm trees, emerald-tinted 
rice fields, and mosquitoes; of brown-skinned, 
scantily-clad humanity, of rich colouring and of 
a climate enervating and sensuous, inducing a 
languorous repose. And the contrast as he passes 
from such surroundings to the torrid and desic- 
cated uplands of the Deccan will not easily be 
forgotten. If he wishes to see those marvellous 
transformations wrought annually by the advent 
of the monsoon, when that which before appeared 
to be desert is converted, almost in a night, into 
a vast rolling sea of green, he must be ready to 


1 Sir T. W. Arnold in his Birdwood Memorial Lecture, delivered at 
the Royal Society of Arts on May 26, 1922. 


FIRST IMPRESSIONS 23 


travel in the months of July and August, and he 
must be prepared to put up with the teasing 
-discomfort produced by an exasperating alliance 
between heat and moisture. 

But it is the buildings of the land that bulk 
most largely among one’s first impressions. Hindu 
and Muhammadan, Buddhist and Jain have all 
given concrete expression in rock, in marble, in 
brick, in wood, and in stone, to the wonderful 
variety of conception which they have formed of 
that which lies, or is thought to lie, beyond 
the world of everyday experience. Temples, 
mosques, and viharas are the finger-posts direct- 
ing one along a fascinating road in quest of the 
conclusions which the most religious- minded 
peoples on earth have arrived at concerning the 
Wuy of the universe and the destiny of man. 
In the first instance it is, no doubt, the outward 
form of the buildings and the symbols and images 
which they contain—the architectural appeal 
which they make—that claims attention, rather 
than any philosophical significance which they 
may possess. Nevertheless, with a little trouble 
one may learn much from these mute chroniclers 
of Indian thought and Indian history; and no 
observant traveller will be content to pass them 
by, even at first sight, as mere examples of 
architectural design. Let us visit some of them 
and pick up something of the story which they 
have to tell. 


CHAPTER III 
WHAT THE BUILDINGS HAVE TO TELL 


THE diversity which is so striking a character- 
istic of the climate and geography of India is 
equally apparent in her architecture. One 
marvels at the delicacy of detail and design 
which the old Jain sculptors hammered out of 
their blocks of white marble, seen at their best, 
perhaps, in the Dilwara temples at the summit 
of Mount Abu in Rajputana. And then one 
strikes the splendid structures of red sandstone 
and white marble which Delhi, Agra, and Lahore 
have inherited from two centuries of Moghul 
domination. And one sees in them the embodi- 
ment of great and lofty ideas. There is nothing 
petty in the architecture of the Moghuls. 
Spaciousness and purity of line seem to be their 
outstanding characteristics. The ideas for which 
they stand seem to have been born of the freedom 
of vast spaces acting upon broad and vigorous 
minds. 

Away, many days’ journey even by express 
train, in the hot vapour-laden atmosphere of the 
south-east of the peninsula, one finds oneself 
in a completely different architectural world. 
The buildings here are large like the mosques 
and the tombs and the pillared halls-of-audience 
of the Moghuls. But with their size, their 
similarity ceases.} 


1 Tam aware that the expert will find in the buildings of the Moghuls 
features which were evolved from earlier Hindu designs ; but I am now 


24 


WHAT THE BUILDINGS TELL 25 


Nothing, indeed, could be farther apart in 
style than the Dravidian temples at Madura, 
Conjeeveram, Srinangam, Tanjore, or Trichino- 
poly, and the mosques and palaces of Delhi 
and Agra. The space within the four walls of 
the Sri Meenakshi Sundareswaral temple at 
Madura is approximately 830 feet by 7380 feet. 
The walls are high, but the feature of all these 
temples which immediately arrests the attention 
is the huge pyramidal tower, rising story above 
story over the elaborate gateways into the 
enclosure, commonly called gopuram. The south 
gopuram of the temple at Madura rises 150 
feet above the street below, a mad medley of 
imagery in stone, brickwork, and brightly coloured 
plaster. One is told that this bewildering pro- 
fusion of figures represents the more popular of 
the deities, personages, and events met with in 
the Hindu sacred books; but it is difficult to 
believe that any can have been left out from 
so crowded a series of galleries. Within the 
enclosures are a sacred tank, rows of cloisters, 
mandapams or halls of assembly for the deliver- 
ing of discourses, the holding of philosophical or 
religious discussions, the recitation of the great 
epics, the singing of sacred songs or the holding 
of the temple dance, and numbers of shrines. In 
an inner enclosure in the centre stand the shrines 
of Shiva Sundara or Shiva the beautiful and his 
spouse Meenakshi, the fish-eyed, the daughter 
of a Pandya king, born with three breasts, one 
of which fortunately disappeared when she met 
Shiva, by whom she was destined to be wed. 

Such buildings as these catch the eye from 
afar. They tower above the earth, immense 
structures outlined sharply against the turquoise 


writing from the point of view of the layman who compares the 
impression created on his mind by the one with that created by the 
other. 


26 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


background of the Indian sky. There is, however, 
another type of temple less noticeable from afar, 
but well calculated to arrest the attention when 
once discovered. This is the cave temple, a 
specimen of which—that of Elephanta—greeted 
us at the very gateway of the continent. The 
first people to hew their sacred places out of the 
rock cliffs upon the hillsides were the Buddhist 
monks, thanks to the religious fervour of the 
Emperor Asoka, who planned and executed some 
at least of these, destined to become enduring 
monuments to his missionary zeal, more than two 
centuries before the Christian era. At Ajanta 
there exists an amazing series of such excava- 
tions, wholly Buddhist. But the example of the 
Buddhists was copied later both by Hindus and 
Jains; and at Ellora in the State of Hyderabad, 
may be seen, side by side, hewn out of the face 
of a vast and lofty scarp of rock, “‘ curved like 
Shiva’s moon-crest ”’ and facing the setting sun, 
a most remarkable series of Buddhist retreats 
and Hindu and Jain temples, stretching for more 
than a mile in length. Near the centre of this 
great scarp stands a temple which immediately 
arrests the eye; “for instead of making a hori- 
zontal excavation into the hillside, the master 
masons here cut down into the sloping hillside 
from above, quarrying a pit varying in depth 
from 160 feet to about 50 feet, and leaving in 
the middle of it a detached mass of rock from 
which they sculptured a full-sized double-storied 
temple—solid at the base, but with the first 
floor completed internally and externally.”1 It 
is known as the Kailasa temple, for it is a re- 
presentation in stone of a wonderful vision 
conjured up in the minds of the master builders 
who conceived it, of the Himdlayan abode on 
Mount Kailasa of the great god Shiva. And 
1 ** A Handbook of Indian Art,” E. B. Havell. 


* 





Plate 4. 


A DRAVIDIAN TEMPLE. 


‘Tne feature which immediately arrests attention is the huge pyramidal tower, commonly 


called gopuram.” 





WHAT THE BUILDINGS TELL 27 


one cannot but marvel as one gazes at it, at the 
soaring imagination and the technical skill which 
combined to create so splendid and unique an 
edifice. But having satisfied one’s astonishment 
and admiration one may turn with profit to the 
earlier works of the Buddhist monks, less striking 
in dramatic effect, but containing a key, never- 
theless, to much that is of paramount importance 
to any one who seeks to understand something 
of the heart of India. These Buddhist caves 
are of two distinct types; in one of them one 
sees a place of residence—the vihara or monastery 
of the order; in the other a hall of assembly— 
the chaitya or chapter-hall of the brethren. 
The finest example of this latter type at Ellora 
is known as the Visvakarma Cave. It is of a 
comparatively late date, probably of the seventh 
century A.D., and has lost something of the 
simplicity of earlier examples. The main plan 
of construction is, however, constant in all the 
chaityas of the Buddhists and gives the key to 
their origin and purpose. In design they resemble 
a Christian church, for they consist of a nave 
with aisles on either side formed by two rows 
of pillars. The nave terminates in an apse, and 
the aisles are carried round the back of the apse 
so as to form a passage-way round the whole 
of the central part of the building. Its object 
was, in fact, to permit of the circumambulation 
of the main building by bands of pilgrims. In 
place of the altar of the Christian church, the 
Buddhist chapter-hall contains a monument 
roughly hemispherical in shape, known as a 
stupa, the cenotaph of Buddha. Here, then, we 
have a hall of assembly of simple design with 
nothing in the way of furniture beyond a 
cenotaph, the whole surrounded by a corridor. 
What is the story which these things have to 
tell? If we begin our inquiry by tracing the 


28 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


stupa in its form of a Buddhist cenotaph to its 
source, we find ourselves carried at one stride 
back across the yawning gulf of time to a day 
nearly 500 years B.c. The ancient records which 
have now been rescued from the dusty limbo of 
past and forgotten things provide us with the 
material which enables us to paint a picture of 
the events of those early days. Let us try to 
do so. 

In the shade of a plantation of sal trees we 
see a man lying at the point of death—a vener- 
able figure of eighty years, the leader evidently 
of some cause or mission, for he is surrounded by 
a group of his immediate followers, grief-stricken 
and clearly apprehensive for the future of their 
cause, now that they are faced with the prospect 
of the loss of their revered Master. Not far from 
the grove is situated a small town—little more, 
in fact, than a large village, such as one may see 
in many a rural tract of the India of to-day, for 
the spokesman of the disciples grumbles at this 
selection of “‘a little wattle-and-daub town, a 
town in the midst of the jungle,” 1 as the death- 
place of his beloved Master. It is nevertheless 
the capital of an Aryan tribe of aristocratic 
lineage—a tribe of the great Khatriya or warrior 
caste, the Mallas of Kusinara; a tribe, more- 
over, ruled on a democratic basis by an assembly 
of the representatives of its own people. And 
while the disciples are gathered round their dying 
Master, drinking in his last words spoken to them 
in the sal plantation on the outskirts of Kusinara, 
it happens that the Mallas are assembled in their 
mote-hall for the transaction of public business. 
The scene as one pictures it is a dramatic one. 
The discussion is suddenly interrupted, and a hush 
falls upon the assembly as a man in the garb of a 


1 Quoted by Mr. B. C. Law in his ‘‘ Ksatriya Clans in Buddhist 
India.”’ 


WHAT THE BUILDINGS TELL 29 


wandering friar is seen approaching. He is easily 
recognised by the assembled Mallas, for it is 
~Ananda, the spokesman of the disciples of the 
sage Gautama, who, during a long lifetime spent 
in preaching and in good works, has acquired a 
widespread reputation for wisdom and _ piety 
throughout the land occupied by the kingdoms of 
Kosala, Magadah, Kosambi, and Avanti, and the 
neighbouring republics—those of the Mallas, the 
Kalamas, the Sakhyas, and the Moriyas, and the 
powerful Vajjian confederacy of the Licchavis 
and the Videhas. On learning from Ananda the 
news of the approaching death of his Master, 
the assembly breaks up and the Mallas flock to 
the plantation outside their town to pay homage 
to the renowned teacher ere he breathes his last. 
It is one of the great moments of the world’s 
history, for it marks the close of a career which 
has since left its imprint upon millions of the 
human race. The dying man, as he gazes back 
over the years that are gone, sees in the far-off 
days of childhood a boy brought up with loving 
care in the well-to-do household of an aristocrat 
of the Sakhya tribe. Next deeply imprinted 
upon his memory he sees the sensitive feelings of 
the same young man subjected to a rude shock by 
a dawning realisation of the hardness of life for 
those beyond the shelter of the loving home in 
which he has himself been nurtured. Of the 
years that followed this discovery, which drove 
him forth from home and family in search of a 
solution of the problem of the sorrow and suffer- 
ing of all existence, he next sees a picture, years 
of struggle and sustained endeavour, of the trial 
and ultimate rejection of the austerities and 
penances of extreme asceticism, of long periods of 
introspection, and, finally, of the great moment of 
revelation when the cause of sorrow and suffering 
was flashed upon his mind, and the way of escape 


30 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


therefrom became clear. His mind lingers, per- 
haps, upon the first great sermon in which these 
illuminating flashes of insight were formulated for 
the salvation of mankind, and then travels on 
over the succeeding years of a ministry which has 
brought into existence a band of followers, the 
founders, as we now see, of the greatest monastic 
order in the world. And so he comes back to the 
present, the years of intense and fruitful struggle 
behind him—years which had seen the young man 
of a small Aryan tribe dwelling amidst the forests 
of the Himalayan foothills become a world-wide 
teacher of men, the Enlightened One, the Buddha. 
And knowing that the hour of his death is at 
hand, he gives orders as to his funeral: “‘ As men 
treat the body of a King of Kings, Ananda, so 
should they treat the remains of a Tathagatha.”’ 
It fell to the Mallas of Kusinara to accord him 
the funeral customary amongst these Aryan tribes 
in the case of persons of distinction. And having 
in due course carried through the ceremony of 
cremation, they damped down the funeral pyre 
with water scented with all sorts of perfumes, and 
collected the bones and placed them in their 
mote-hall, surrounding them with “a lattice 
work of spears and with a rampart of bows.” 
And news of the death of the Exalted One was 
noised abroad, so that requests were made by 
the rulers of the neighbouring kingdoms and the 
assemblies of the republics for portions of the 
relics. ‘“‘ The Exalted One was a Khatriya and 
so are we,’ ran the claim. ‘ We are worthy to 
receive a portion of the relics of the Exalted One. 
Over the remains of the Exalted One will we put 
up a sacred cairn.’ So the remains of Buddha 
were divided into eight portions and distributed 
amongst the applicants, and cairns were raised 
over each portion and over the vessel in which 
the relics had been collected, and over the embers 


WHAT THE BUILDINGS TELL 31 


of the funeral pyre. Thus there were ten cairns 
in all. 

The stupas which we see alike in the Buddhist 
‘chapter-halls of to-day—such an one has been 
built in Calcutta within the last few years for the 
reception of a relic found in Southern India, and 
presented by the Government of India to the 
Mahabodhi Society—and in those ancient halls 
hewn out of the living rock at such places as 
Ajanta, Karle, and Ellora, represent the sacred 
cairns raised up over the funeral ashes of Buddha. 
Yet the stupa was not a creation of Buddhism, 
and we may, if our curiosity incites us to 
further investigation, trace back its history to a 
still earlier day. When Ajattasatru, King of 
Magadah, and the spokesmen of the republican 
tribes declared that they would raise up cairns 
over the ashes of the departed sage, they were 
not the authors of some novel plan for honouring 
the dead; they were but carrying out Buddha’s 
own instruction to Ananda, that his remains 
should be treated as men treated those of a King 
of Kings, or person of distinction. Research has 
shown that amongst these Aryan settlers it was 
customary to expose the bodies of ordinary men 
in a public place reserved for the purpose, that 
they might there be destroyed by animals or 
disintegrate in the course of time, much as the 
bodies of the Parsis are disposed of at the present 
day. But the bodies of more distinguished 
persons were cremated and cairns raised over the 
ashes, as was done in Buddha’s case. The prac- 
tice has been traced far back into early Vedic 
times, and in the dome-shaped structure of the 
Buddhist stupa Mr. Havell sees a copy of the 
domical hut built of bamboo or wooden ribs of 
the chieftain of the clan or tribe. It is a reason- 
able assumption, he thinks, that at the funeral of 
distinguished men in early Vedic times, models of 


32 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


their abodes were made as temporary homes for 
the departed spirits during that period when, in 
accordance with Vedic ritual, the sacrificial wor- 
ship of their relatives and descendants for three 
generations was required to help them on their 
way from the earthly to the extra - terrestrial 
spheres. 

And just as the Buddhist stupa provides a key 
to early Aryan custom in the treatment of the 
dead, so does the Buddhist chapter-hall, in which 
the stupa is enshrined, afford an indication of 
the nature of the early Aryan polity, of which 
tribes like the Mallas and the Licchavis, provide 
examples. For the chapter-halls of the Buddhist 
monks were clearly copied from the mote-halls of 
the Aryan tribes. Buddha himself was a great 
admirer of the republican system of government 
amongst the Licchavis. ‘“ Have you heard,”’ he 
asks Ananda, “‘ that the Vajjians hold full and fre- 
quent public assemblies ?”’ And upon Ananda 
saying that this was so, he added, “‘So long, 
Ananda, as the Vajjians hold these full and 
frequent public assemblies, so long may they be 
expected not to decline but to prosper.’ And 
the word sangha used of the Order of Buddhist 
monks, is the word used also to denote the cor- 
porations of such tribes as the Mallas and the 
Licchavis. It serves, in fact, as a key to much 
that is of extraordinary interest in the ancient 
polity of Vedic India. Panini, the great gram- 
marian of the seventh century B.c., was at special 
pains to explain its meaning, namely, a collection 
of individuals combining for a particular purpose, 
or, as we should say, a corporation. And it was 
freely used to denote a great variety of corpora- 
tions such as trade and craft guilds, religious 
orders, municipal and village assemblies, and 
larger political organisations—forms of govern- 
ment, that is to say, other than monarchical. 


WHAT THE BUILDINGS TELL 33 


The Sangha of the Licchavis is a case in point. 
It was oligarchic rather than democratic, for it 
‘seems to have been a parliament of the heads of 
a number of clans, or groups of families, of which 
the tribe was composed. Each such chieftain 
was the ruler of a principality which was in many 
respects autonomous, but which was subject to 
the Sangha in the more important matters. The 
Sangha of the Licchavis, therefore, was a federa- 
tion of the chieftains of the clans, exercising 
sovereign power over the state as a whole. There 
were, however, other political Sanghas of a more 
democratic type, and while the religious order 
of the Jains, known as the Jain Sangha, was 
modelled by its founder Mahavira, who was him- 
self a Kshatriya of Vesali, the capital of the 
Licchavis, upon the political Sangha of that tribe, 
the Buddhist Sangha was modelled on the more 
democratic organisations. The point of chief 
interest, however, to which our inquiry as to the 
origin of the Buddhist chapter-hall has led us, is 
the existence in these early days of a large number 
and variety of institutions of a representative 
type, not merely in the administrative but in 
many other spheres, showing that the principle 
of collective control and responsibility was a 
strongly -marked characteristic of the Aryan 
people. One is curious, naturally, as to the kind 
of procedure governing the conduct of affairs by 
such bodies; and it is somewhat strange that 
while there are many references in the ancient 
literature to different types of corporation, it is 
only in the Buddhist books that we find any 
account of the procedure adopted for the trans- 
action of business. There are good grounds, how- 
ever, for assuming that the rules of procedure in 
force in the Buddhist Sangha were framed in 
accordance with those ordinarily in use in the case 
of Sanghas generally, for Buddha makes use of a 
D 


34 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


number of technical terms without considering it 
necessary to explain them. Had he himself been 
the author of them, it would obviously have been 
necessary for him, as Professor D. R. Bhandarkar 
has pointed out, to give some explanation of 
their meaning. 

The description of the procedure given in the 
Buddhist books shows how remarkable is the 
resemblance between that of the assemblies of 
two thousand five hundred years ago and of those 
of the present day. The dignity of the assembly 
was arranged for by the appointment of a special 
officer, whose duty it was to see that members 
were accorded seats in accordance with their 
status and seniority. There was also a special 
officer, corresponding to the parliamentary 
‘Whip ” of the present day, who was charged 
with the responsibility, when necessity arose, of 
seeing that a quorum was secured. When the 
meeting had assembled, the member initiating 
business announced the motion which he desired 
to submit. The motion was then placed formally 
before the assembly for discussion. In some 
cases this was done three times, in others only 
once. If the members observed silence, the 
motion became the resolution of the Sangha. If 
there was discussion and difference of opinion was 
found to exist, the matter was decided by the 
vote of the majority, the voting being by ballot. 
In the case of members prevented by illness or 
other disability from attending in person, pro- 
vision was made for the recording of absentee 
votes. 

It will be seen from what has been written 
above, that the chapter-hall of the Buddhists is 
the product of a people with whom the principle 


1 In his Carmichael Lectures in 1918, in which he deals in an interest- 
ing and scholarly manner with the various systems of administration 
in force amongst the Aryans in India in these early days. 


WHAT THE BUILDINGS TELL 35 


of the collective direction and control of affairs 
was a tradition. But besides conveying down the 
centuries news of the polity of ancient India, it, 
like the stupa, carries us back also to the ritual 
of the sacrifice, the earliest known form of the 
religion of the Indo-Aryan people. If the chapter- 
hall of the Buddhists had been nothing but a hall 
of assembly, there had been no need for the sur- 
rounding corridor. What was the purpose and 
origin of this feature of the building? Its pur- 
pose, as has been indicated, was to enable pilgrims 
to walk round the stupa, keeping it always 
on their right, without interfering with those 
assembled in the hall. But why this circum- 
ambulation of the stupa? The answer given by 
Mr. Havell is that in this Buddhist custom is to 
be found the adaptation of a practice derived 
from Vedic sun worship. The early Aryans 
when they processed round their altars from left 
to right were treading the path of the supreme 
law—that which governed the rising up and the 
going down of the sun. Gautama, while changing 
its precise significance, retained the symbolism of 
the wheel of the law, and with the symbolism 
there remained the ritual. Hence also, as I have 
shown elsewhere, the strangely literal manner in 
which in those Indian border-lands where the 
curious form of Buddhism known as lamaism is 
found, the people interpret the phrase “ turning 
the wheel of the law,’’ and the meticulous care 
with which they circumambulate their stupas 
(chortens) and other kindred monuments.’ 

We have travelled far from Ellora in our dive 
into the past. Let us return for a moment to 
the Visvakarma Cave, that we may take note for 
future reference before leaving it, of an inscription 
in the characters of the eighth or ninth century 


1 See Mr. E. B. Havell’s ‘*‘ Handbook of Indian Art.”’ 
2 See my “* Lands of the Thunderbolt.” 


36 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


A.D., the translation of which runs as follows: 
‘** All things proceed from cause; this cause has 
been declared by the Tathagatha ; all things will 
cease to exist; this is that which is declared by 
the great Sramana.’’ Its meaning will become 
apparent later when we consider .the Buddhist 
doctrine. For the moment we may occupy our- 
selves with a continuation of our inspection of 
types of Indian architecture. 

These are not exhausted by caves and build- 
ings. There is yet another type, which may be 
described as a compromise between an excavation 
and an edifice. Striking examples are to be seen 
at Mamallapuram, better known, perhaps, as the 
Seven Pagodas, on the seashore sixty miles south 
of the city of Madras. Unquestionably the 
pleasantest way of visiting Mamallapuram is, as 
I did, to drift with the breeze, aided, when neces- 
sary, by a gang of coolies with a tow-rope, down 
the canal which runs south from Madras. With 
the descent of the sun a great peace came upon 
the land, stretching away on all sides to the 
horizon, uninterrupted save by fields of softly 
waving paddy and sombre clumps of palm trees. 
I fell asleep in a vague and shadowy world lit 
only by the winking night-lights strewn across 
the velvet curtain of the sky; I was awakened in 
a world of vivid colour, a strip of golden sand 
dividing a land of emerald from an azure sea. 
Between my house-boat on the canal and the 
ocean there stretched a strip of level ground, 
from which rose a curious outcrop of boulders and 
ridges of felspathic gneiss—the raw material of 
the strange series of temples upon which I now 
gazed. The most interesting were the monolithic 
temples, fashioned—for they were not built — 
somewhere about the fifth or sixth century, out 
of the huge boulders which the workmen found 
ready to their hand. These shrines, known as 


WHAT THE BUILDINGS TELL 37 


raths, are, as Mr. C. S. Crole observes in his 
Manual of the Chingleput District,” very like 
Buddhist buildings, and his conclusion is that in 
them are to be seen “ petrifactions of the last 
forms of Buddhist architecture and the first forms 
of that of the Dravidian.”’ 5 

Not far from these stands another silent record 
of the product of India’s brooding thought. On 
the perpendicular face of a cliff of rock, 96 feet 
in length and 43 feet in height, is sculptured in 
deep relief a remarkable picture—the most re- 
markable of its class, according to Ferguson, to 
be found in India. It is usually known as the 
** Penance of Arjuna,’’ and depicts an episode in 
the great Hindu work, the ‘‘ Mahabharata,” a 
stupendous epic eight times as long as the “ Iliad ”’ 
and the ‘‘ Odyssey’? combined, describing the 
war between the Pandavas and their cousins 
the Kauravas for the over-lordship of the land of 
Bharatvarsha. The particular episode supposed 
to form the subject-matter of this remarkable 
panel is one based upon an ancient and deep- 
seated belief of the Hindus in the efficacy of 
asceticism in obtaining for man control of super- 
natural powers. While in exile in the forest 
before the great battle of Kurukshetra, which was 
to restore to the Pandavas their lost kingdom, 
Arjuna, one of the five Pandava brothers, prac- 
tised austerities in order to win from the gods 
celestial weapons, and obtained from Shiva, 
amongst other boons, the matchless bow named 
Gandiva. The figure, thought to be that of 
Arjuna, is seen in the posture of an ascetic on the 
left of a cleft in the rock, which has skilfully been 
made use of to introduce the snake deity Vasuki, 
the Naga Raja and his daughter Ulupi rising 
from their kingdom in the depths to do homage 
to Arjuna. Shiva with a mace stands to the left 
of Arjuna, and the remaining spaces of the rock 


38 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


surface are filled with animals, ascetics, and 
celestial beings, all attracted by the fame of the 
austerities practised by Arjuna. The elephants 
of the great god Indra—and it is worth remarking 
that the capital of Bharatvarsha was called Has- 
tinapura, after Hastin the elephant and mount 
of Indra—bulk largely in the lower right-hand 
portion of the bas-relief, and come like all the rest 
to gaze upon Arjuna. 

This great record of a famous episode hewn in 
the rock at Mamallapuram makes a noble intro- 
duction to one of the great literary treasures of 
India. When one has had time to dive into it, 
one discovers sandwiched into an enthralling epic 
story a profound philosophical treatise, known 
as the Baghavad Gita, the most universally 
treasured of all the sacred volumes of the Hindus 
even at the present day. But a consideration of 
this remarkable volume must be postponed to a 
later stage. 

It is perhaps unnecessary to explain that the 
brief references to some of the buildings which 
press themselves upon the notice of the traveller 
wherever he goes in India are not in any way 
intended to constitute studies in architecture or 
archaeology. The buildings mentioned have been 
selected at random amongst those which I have 
seen myself for one purpose, and one purpose 
only, that of introducing the visitor to the wonder- 
ful diversity of style of the edifices raised over a 
vast span of time to the known and unknown gods 
of Indian belief, which in its turn testifies to the 
prolixity of conception of the unseen world which 
has flourished upon Indian soil. Whence came 
these successive waves of immigrant stock which 
have given to India so rich a store? That ques- 
tion has been briefly answered already in the 
opening chapter of this volume, wherein it has 
been shown that the great gateway into India has 


La 





Plate 5. 
Rock SCULPTURE AT MAMALLAPURAM. 


. +. acleft in the rock which has skilfully been made use of to introduce the snake deity 
and his daughter rising from their kingdom in the depths.” 








. + ~~." ¢ ? ' Vie > > 

: "> She he A > ‘ by J 
BR 2 ry wa af ee ; is An 

iu ’ wt : AY 

j (3 s) i. rahe . ‘ ei 
f pe ih, [ ° y. A La A 
: n MO hoe ae, . . hab ry 
: : one th + om a ’ 4 a 
i Prill. s > su 7 a 
i 


Lon 
PA 


WHAT THE BUILDINGS TELL 39 


always stood, until the conquest of the sea opened 
up a new and far wider doorway, in the tangled 
“labyrinth of the mountains on the north-west. 
It is well, then, at this early stage to bring this 
ancient highway under examination. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER 


BRoaDLy speaking, the North-West Frontier may 
be said to run from the heat-laden plains of 
Makran, whose southern shores are washed by 
the Arabian sea, in a direction slightly east of 
north up to the pine-clad highlands of Kashmir. 
Politically, and to a large extent also ethno- 
graphically, this huge tract of desert and mountain 
falls into two distinct parts, marked off by the 
Gomal river. The southern portion comprises the 
ereat block of territory known as Baluchistan, 
which forms a rough square bounded by Sind on 
the east, Afghanistan on the north, and Persia 
and the Arabian sea on the west and south re- 
spectively, with a wedge-shaped excrescence pro- 
jecting from its north-east corner. North of the 
Gomal the frontier region consists of a long strip 
of uninterrupted mountain of varying width, in- 
habited by Pathan or Pashtu-speaking tribes. 

A very fair idea of the physical characteristics 
of Baluchistan may be gained by climbing any 
of the hills which rise abruptly from the plateau 
round Quetta. My own bird’s-eye view of the 
country was obtained from the precipitous sides 
of a peak called Takatoo, whence I gazed down 
upon a scene happily described by Mr. D. de S. 
Bray as “a chaotic jumble of mud-coloured 
mountains, for all the world like a bewildered 
herd of Titanic camels.” The whole country is 

40 


THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER Al 


outside the monsoon area and has an annual 
rainfall of about 9 inches, with the result that the 


‘rivers which loom so large in the map exist for a 


brief period in the year only. Nor is it only in 
the matter of rivers that the map shows symptoms 
of indulging in unconscious irony. The lakes 
painted in limpid blue create expectations of 
something very different from the ‘“ gloomy 
swamps of reality,” and a laborious journey of 
500 miles across the crude expanse of desiccated 
hill and scorched plain which lies between Quetta 
and the Persian frontier taught me to regard 
with grave suspicion the “refreshing oases of 
green and the named localities innumerable ”’ 
which appear in the map and which seem to 
have been inserted chiefly with the object of 
bearing witness to the meticulous industry of the 
draughtsman. 

The whole country revels in contrasts. ‘ The 
winter cold of the uplands baffles description,” 
while to give some idea of the midsummer heat 
of the Kachhi plain even so graphic a writer as 
Mr. Bray finds himself compelled to fall back 
upon the hackneyed local proverb which hints at 
the superfluity of Hell “to depict that burning, 
fiery furnace.”” The land likewise possesses an 
altogether extraordinary potential fertility ; but 
by an unfortunate dispensation of Providence 
the one agent necessary to convert the potential 
into actual—namely, water—is for the most part 
lacking. Where it can be applied you can grow 
what you please; but often enough ‘‘ Nature is 
so perverse that where there is land there is no 
water, and where there is water there is no land.” 4 

Its people fit appropriately enough into the 
somewhat rough and unfinished setting with 
which Nature has provided them. Their occupa- 


1 The quotations are from Mr. Denys Bray’s census report on 
Baluchistan for 1911. 


42 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


tions are simple—chiefly agriculture, camel-driv- 
ing, and flock-owning—and the standard of their 
civilisation is primitive. Made up in the main 
of Baluchis, Brahuis, and Afghans, they are 
picturesque in appearance and manly in their 
bearing. To men of the type of Sir Robert 
Sandeman, who may be said to have been the 
founder of Baluchistan as it exists to-day, they 
made a powerful appeal, and the influence which 
he exercised over them was undoubtedly based 
largely upon the homage which they themselves 
instinctively paid to a virile and sympathetic 
personality. That some decades of contact with 
the system of administration introduced by Sir 
Robert Sandeman and carried on by his successors 
has done something to soften and improve the 
primitive ethics of the tribes is shown by a 
report issued by the agent to the Governor- 
General early in the present century, wherein it 
is stated that “‘in the Magasi country a decision 
of the Shahi jirga disallowing the custom under 
which the revenge due on a guilty man can be 
taken on his relations if the offender has ab- 
sconded, has been recorded and will be treated as 
a leading case.” 

Those whose lot it has been to live and work in 
Baluchistan find more of interest and attraction 
in its wild spaciousness than would appear 
probable from a mere bowing acquaintance with 
the country and its inhabitants; but it is no 
longer in Baluchistan that frontier. problems 
present themselves in their most poignant form. 
It is in the long, sinuous stretch of rugged moun- 
tain land that runs from the Gomal valley to the 
Swat river that is to be found what one of India’s 
viceroys has described as “the most critical, 
most anxious, and most explosive section ”’ of the 
entire land frontier of the continent. It is here 
that the real interest of the frontier centres, for 


THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER 43 


it is in this stretch of intractable country with 
its difficult and wayward peoples that are to be 
“found the conditions governing the broad prin- 
ciples of frontier policy and creating the host of 
subsidiary local problems which add immeasur- 
ably to the complexity of the whole question. 

In Baluchistan British administration runs up 
to the Afghan boundary; north of the Gomal, 
except at one or two points, it stops consider- 
ably short of it. The frontier here consists, there- 
fore, of a belt of territory enclosed between 
two boundary lines, known as the administra- 
tive frontier and the political frontier. British 
administration ceases at one; Afghan adminis- 
tration begins at the other. Between the 
two the tribes enjoy political and municipal in- 
dependence. The political frontier was arrived 
at by agreement with the Amir of Afghanistan 
in 1898, and is sometimes known as the Durand 
line. It has never been demarcated in its entirety. 
The administrative frontier coincides roughly with 
the boundary which we took over from the Sikhs, 
but has undergone small alterations from time 
to time as local circumstances have demanded. 
The distinctive characteristics of the tribes in- 
habiting this wild borderland are selfishness, 
vanity, treachery, vindictiveness, and general 
lawlessness. Their attitude towards one another 
is one of thinly-veiled antagonism which may at 
any moment break out into open hostility. This 
inter-tribal aggressiveness is only overruled by 
religious fanaticism and the fear and hatred 
excited by the smallest suspicion of foreign inter- 
ference, so that it is said of the Afghans of the 
frontier that they are never at peace except when 
they are at war. Asked by a British officer 
what would be their attitude in the event of war 
between Great Britain and Russia, a party of 
tribesmen answered: ‘‘ We would just sit up here 


AA, INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


on our mountain tops watching you both fight, 
until we saw one or other of you utterly defeated ; 
then we would come down and loot the vanquished 
till the last mule! God is great! What a time 
that would be for us!’’?! It would indeed, for 
their favourite pastime is raiding and thieving. 
One would hardly expect that the duty of 
keeping watch and ward over these troublous 
marches would be a popular one. The life of a 
frontier officer is hard, and he treads daily on 
the brink of eternity. Yet despite its obvious 
drawbacks the fact remains that these endless 
ranges of rugged, granitic, mesozoic, and tertiary 
rocks rising from lower levels covered with wind- 
blown deposits, do possess the power of inspiring 
in those whose lot is cast among them an extra- 
ordinary enthusiasm. At first one is rather 
puzzled to find the explanation. The unending 
tangle of cliffs and peaks limned in hard outline 
against the sky are not always beautiful, though 
they are generally impressive. Closer acquaint- 
ance proves that they do contain spots of 
marvellous beauty, where the views to be obtained 
under different effects of light and shade are such 
as to stir the deepest chords of one’s aesthetic 
sensibility. Who is there, indeed, among those 
who have experienced it, who will not testify to 
the indescribable delight of long days of glorious 
toil among the mountains, followed by night 
beneath the stars crowned with the golden glory 
of the dawn ? The world slumbers, all Nature is 
at rest, and then there comes the first faint 
stirring of the breeze among the trees: the soft, 
cool caress upon one’s cheek as it passes by, a 
perfumed herald of approaching day. Slowly the 
black draperies of night fall away. There is no 
colour yet; allis black and white with innumerable 


1 T. L. Pennell, M.D., ‘“‘ Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan 
Frontier.” 


THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER AS 


intermediate shades of grey—a giant etching on 
the canvas of the sky—a marvellous monochrome. 
The silence of the night is broken; something 
scurries among the pines; the note of a bird 
trembles on the air. While one gazes spellbound 
the monochrome becomes irradiated under the 
influence of a magic brush. The chilly whiteness 
of the distant snows softens and glows pink and 
gold. The dark shadows which veiled the moun- 
tains to the west creep slowly down to the valley 
bottom. The trees become green, the mountain 
torrents limpid, the smell of incense rises from 
olive-coloured tufts of wormwood, and from far 
below spirals of blue-grey smoke rise lazily from 
the abodes of men. Day has come. 

Such is the wonder of the dawn. An artist 
may paint it; a master of words may describe 
it; but who can explain it? The material of the 
picture is simple enough, crude elemental sub- 
stances for the most part—rock and stone, earth 
and conglomerate, humidity congealed by low 
temperature, wood and fibre coloured by chloro- 
phyll, all tinted, perhaps, as a result of the effect 
of varying quantities of vibrations known as light 
waves; but the whole, when analysed by the 
chemist and the physicist, a mere collection of 
energy and matter in different forms. To the 
beasts of the field and the fowls of the air it is 
this ; to primitive man it is probably little more ; 
but to the man who has eyes to see and ears to 
hear and a soul to feel it is something infinitely 
more—it is the far-off reflection of a splendour 
which is not of earth; a token of the divine in 
man. 

_ It is experiences of this kind which confound 
the man who holds that the alpha and omega of 
the universe are explicable upon a naturalistic 
basis, and a naturalistic basis alone. He may 
argue that the instruments by which the beauty 


46 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


of the dawn is conveyed to the perceiving mind— 
the eye and the ear—are the products of natural 
selection; and there is no need to waste time in 
disputing the cogency of his reasoning, for the eye 
and the ear possess an indubitable survival value. 
But no one, surely, will claim a survival value for 
his aesthetic emotions, for a mere capacity for 
appreciating natural beauty can have no influence 
one way or the other upon the shaping and the 
preservation of the individual or the species. 
Are we, then, to designate the whole gamut of our 
aesthetic experiences an accidental by-product of 
the play and interplay of natural forces which 
shape the evolution of the human race? So im- 
probable an assumption will scarcely carry con- 
viction to an impartial inquirer. Such a person 
will surely find that his aesthetic experiences fit 
far more readily into a theistic frame, whether 
his conception of the divine approximates to the 
monotheism of the Christian or the mystic pan- 
theism of the intellectual Hindu. And he will 
care little that his theories or beliefs are not sus- 
ceptible of the empirical proof without which, on 
a naturalistic view, knowledge cannot exist. His 
experience is his, and no amount of learned dis- 
putation can rob him of it or of that which he 
derives from it. 

I do not suggest that the average warden of 
the marches habitually subjects his feelings to this 
kind of analysis, but I do suggest that the cireum- 
stances of his life are such that he frequently 
experiences the species of spiritual exaltation in- 
duced by solitude amid the grandeur of Nature, 
and that such experience is one of the factors that 
go to make the magic of the frontier. No doubt 
there are many others which are less subtle, and 
therefore more easily analysed. Life on the 
frontier, for example, unmistakably drags a man 
out of the rut of conventional existence. Its 


THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER Ay 


mountains and valleys share with the desert an 
atmosphere of large-hearted freedom. One lives 
here close to Nature and far removed from artifici- 
ality. Life is full of the breadth of vast spaces 
and the vigour of the strong, clean breath of 
the hills. The absence alike of the amenities 
and the restraints of civilisation breed a buoyant 
self-reliance. Its rock-crowned keeps pulse with 
passion—but passion that is virile and keen, and 
that is redeemed by its surroundings from the 
cramped pettiness that haunts the emotional pass- 
ages in the drama of human existence in cities. 
The Afridi slays and is slain with wild enjoyment, 
and this attitude towards fundamentals is con- 
tagious. His ethics are based upon a literal belief 
in the righteousness of taking an eye for an eye 
and a tooth for a tooth; and this simple view of 
the right method of ensuring the perpetuation of 
justice upon earth gives his personality an acute 
interest. It is recorded in a casual entry in the 
pages of the Khyber political diary for the month 
of June 1907, how an old feud between the Zarif 
Khel and Hakim Khel sections of the Khusrogi 
Zakka Khel was finally disposed of by the former 
killing three of their own men in order to square 
their account with the latter. So signal an 
example of the meticulous care with which the 
requirements of an unwritten code are observed 
cannot fail to exact a measure of admiration 
which need not be more than tempered, surely, 
by a perusal of a subsequent observation appear- 
ing somewhat in the nature of a postscript in the 
same record, from which we learn that the Zarif 
Khel “had also the inheritance of the large 
estates of the deceased for their second object in 
view.” 

It may sound improbable, in view of what has 
been said as to the characteristics of the tribesmen, 
that they should add their quota to the attraction 


48 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


of the frontier. Nevertheless I have little hesita- 
tion in saying that this is the case. The Pashtu- 
speaking man of the hills is selfish, vain, treacher- 
ous, vindictive and cruel, and outward and visible 
signs of these characteristics are sufficiently abun- 
dant. Women without noses are comparatively 
common in tribal territory—victims of marital 
jealousy and vindictiveness ; the roll of English- 
men who have lost their lives through Pathan 
treachery is along one. A typical instance came 
under my notice when I was camped on the 
borders of the Mahsud country in 1900. A young 
English officer with a party of native troops was 
in pursuit of a band of Mahsud marauders. One 
of the robbers fell wounded among the rocks, and 
the remainder made off. The Englishman went 
forward to take and succour the wounded man. 
He lay hidden among the rocks, and the English- 
man passed by without seeing him. Whereupon 
the wounded man, stealthily raising his rifle, shot 
him dead through the back. 

This act of treachery might perhaps be attri- 
buted to racial fanaticism. Not so the fell blow 
by which Mohammed Ashgar died. This man, we 
are told, had amassed much property by raiding, 
and throughout Tirah generally was much re- 
spected and liked. Like most men of the border, 
he carried on an hereditary feud, and for the most 
part he walked abroad with caution. Relying, 
however, upon the fact that his three enemies had 
given security that they would suspend the feud 
for a time, he proceeded to a tribal assembly 
without followers. It was soon seen that he had 
taken too much for granted. His enemies had 
hired a fourth man, who deliberately shot him in 
open durbar. It is recorded that as the people 
did not know how many of those present were 
interested in the murder, “‘no one moved or 
protested until the meeting broke up in the usual 


THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER 49 


way.” It is, perhaps, only fair to add that this 
peculiarly cold-blooded piece of treachery “‘ caused 
a great stir in Tirah.”’ 

In the ordinary way the Blowd feud, of course, 
calls for no comment. It is a necessary product 
of the “‘ eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ”’ 
conception of justice. And little difficulty 1s 
usually experienced in temporarily suspending a 
feud when more important matters are toward. 
The following entry in the Khyber political diary, 
dated May 18, 1907, provides a sufficient indica- 
tion of the usual state of affairs regarding the in- 
stitution: ‘* Now that the Afridis have returned 
to their homes in Tirah they have reopened their 
private feuds, and are prosecuting them vigor- 
ously. No less than five men were killed during 
the week.’ Episodes such as this are merely 
examples of the working of the rule that a life 
must be given for a life. And if, as we are so fond 
of saying, the exception proves the rule, the 
Mahsuds obligingly provide it. The chalweshtis, 
or tribal police appointed by the jirga to carry out 
its orders, are inviolable while engaged upon their 
duties, and in the event of their causing death 
while in the execution of them, the blood feud does 
not lie. 

As for selfishness, 1t is so deep-rooted and so 
widespread that it may confidently be taken into 
consideration when a forecast of the behaviour of 
any particular tribe or clan has to be made. Thus 
when punitive measures against the Zakka Khel 
were in contemplation in 1906, the Political Agent 
wrote: “‘ There is, of course, the possibility of an 
outburst of what we call fanaticism, but what the 
tribesmen call patriotism, and this might unite all 
sections in a last struggle against us; but the 
dominating characteristic of the Afridi, his over- 
powering selfishness, gives reason to believe that 
he would sacrifice his neighbour to save himself.” 

E 


50 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Specific instances of this unpleasing trait may 
be observed any day. One Usman, a Zakka Khel 
bad character, fearing punishment at the hands of 
the tribe, crossed the border into Afghanistan until 
such time as the storm blew over. The behaviour 
of his friends provided matter for a brief but 
instructive passage in an Official report. ‘ His 
neighbours,’ wrote the Political Officer, “ are 
grazing their cattle in his crops.” Yet with all 
his many unpleasant traits, he is a strange bundle 
of contradictions. In many respects he resembles 
a wayward child. With all his treachery he pays 
inviolable respect to the laws of hospitality. 
Should circumstances so turn out that a man 
found his most deadly enemy his guest, his life 
would be sacred. It is probably due to the 
sanctity of the laws of hospitality that one finds, 
side by side with natural treachery, an astonish- 
ing capacity for loyalty. The most remarkable 
example of loyalty on a large scale is contained in 
the story of the Khyber Rifles. It was obvious 
that the trials to which the men composing the 
corps might be subjected would be great, and it 
has been officially admitted that the experiment 
was viewed “ with mistrust by many and with 
misgiving by all.” Yet through all the trials with 
which they were beset, save only in one, they 
stood the test. That one supreme trial in which 
they were found wanting was an issue of the world 
war—a thing incalculable in its ramifications and 
one which wrecked the calculations of many be- 
sides those who built upon the capacity for loyalty 
of the wild tribes of the Indian borderland. Until 
this grim and incalculable terror came upon man- 
kind, the honour of the Khyber Rifles remained 
untarnished. During the operations against the 
Zakka Khel in 1908, not a man deserted and not 
a rifle was lost. They had eaten the salt of the 
sirkar, and to their hosts they remained faithful— 


THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER 51 


even unto death. The nature of the test is suffi- 
ciently indicated by the official appreciation : 
‘* This corps, which is mainly composed of Afridis, 
including some 350 Zakka Khel, had to take part 
in an expedition against a people to whom the 
men were bound not only by race and religion, but 
by the closest ties of blood. Indeed in many cases 
in the expedition, brother was fighting against 
brother and son against father.” 

Doubtless the personal influence of the British 
officers of the corps was to a great extent re- 
sponsible for the splendid record of the men. The 
personal element counts for much with the frontier 
tribes. Like the children they are, they are 
peculiarly susceptible to such influence. And 
herein lies the source of the attraction which they 
possess for men of strong and sympathetic natures. 
Force of character counts everywhere; but the 
influence which a man’s character exerts upon 
those around him is seldom so palpable as it is 
upon the frontier. Here a man becomes conscious 
of his power. He sees the effects of his influence 
in the devotion which he not infrequently inspires 
in those who serve him. He feels it in the 
presence of the tribal jirgars which he may be 
called upon to meet. In his official dealings with 
the tribes he is conscious that there lies behind 
him a great tradition. He is treading in the foot- 
steps of men who have left great names behind 
them—great because of their reputation for 
justice, uprightness, sympathy, and understand- 
ing. It is by these men and by him that Great 
Britain and all that Great Britain stands for is 
judged. He is the guardian of the honour not 
only of the Government which he directly repre- 
sents, but of his race. 


CHAPTER V 
AN HISTORIC HIGHWAY 


THE formidable nature of the great natural ram- 
part which encircles India on the north-west 
should now be apparent. What of the gateway 
giving entrance through its guardian walls ? 

A little north of latitude 34, a natural cut in 
the mountains runs for a distance of twenty miles 
from Jamrud on the edge of the trans-Indus plain, 
through the outer range at right angles to its axis, 
to an open spot at Landi Khana on the frontier 
of Afghanistan. It is known as the Khyber Pass, 
and its peculiar importance is derived from the 
fact that it forms a connecting link in the chain 
of communication between the Kabul river valley 
and the plains of India. The value of this 
historic highway possesses all the elements of 
permanence, since it rests on a stable geographical 
basis rather than upon changing political circum- 
stances. The Kabul river valley provides us, 
in fact, with a remarkable example of the de- 
cisive influence which geographical conditions are 
capable of exerting upon the making of history. 
Until the coming of sea power in comparatively 
recent times, it constituted practically the only 
channel through which could enter the many 
influences which have played so large a part in 
shaping the destinies of India. It provided the 
main inlet through which flowed the tide of 
migratory Aryan stock which eventually took 
root in the fertile soil of the Ganges Valley and 

52 


AN HISTORIC HIGHWAY 53 


gave to the world the rich gift of Indian thought 
_and civilisation. 

Many centuries later, though still three hundred 
years before the Christian era, the spirit of a great 
Western civilisation was borne along its stony 
bottom in company with the armed legions of 
Alexander of Macedon. Any one who takes the 
trouble to stroll through the museum at Peshawar 
may see at a glance the mark thus left by Greek 
culture upon the art of India. The Gandhara 
collection of sculptures and relievoes here on 
view bears the unmistakable impress of Hellen- 
istic genius. The theme of the artists is purely 
Indian, namely, the life of Buddha, but many of 
the decorative features which figure in the bas- 
reliefs depicting the legends associated with the 
Teacher’s life, are purely Greek. Here one will 
notice Corinthian capitals and pilasters, there a 
scroll of vine leaves and bunches of grapes. In 
another place one meets with an essentially Greek 
idea represented by kneeling tritons, or again by 
a winged marine monster. But perhaps the most 
striking offspring of Greek art and Indian piety is 
to be found in the images of Buddha himself. It 
would seem, indeed, that their very existence is 
due solely to Greek influence, for the absence of 
any actual representation of the great Teacher in 
the older monuments, in which his presence is 
conventionally indicated by some sacred symbol, 
makes it clear that it was contrary to Indian prac- 
tice to depict his person. “ It is,” as Dr. Spooner 
suggests, “‘ as though the figure of Buddha him- 
self had been deemed too holy for representation 
until the Hellenistic artists of Gandhara, familiar 
with the comprehensive pantheon of Greek art, 
came to the assistance of the Indian Buddhist and 
tutored his first attempts at portraying the divine.’”?} 


1 ** Handbook to the Sculptures in the Peshawar Museum,” by Dr. 
D. B. Spooner, Ph.D. 


54 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


A thousand years after Christ, we see another 
conqueror—Mahmiid of Gazni—treading in the 
footsteps of Alexander, and opening another mo- 
mentous chapter in the life story of the continent. 
Mahmiid was out for plunder. His attitude 
towards India was the instinctive attitude of all 
hillmen towards men of the plains. He swooped 
down with his fierce and fanatical legions upon the 
Rajputs, whom he met and defeated at Peshawar. 
And for a little space, as the life of nations goes, 
he fought and plundered right royally. 

Many incalculable things sprang from this first 
tumultuous incursion of the fighting legions of 
Islam. With successive waves of Muhammadan 
invaders there swept through the mountain passes 
fresh thoughts and new ideals. The shock of 
impact was not physical merely, but mental also. 
The polytheism and pantheism in which the whole 
land was steeped was challenged by a pure and 
aggressive monotheism. The tired pessimism of 
Hinduism found a formidable rival in a new 
religion of hope. The quickening force thus 
introduced into the thought of India was not 
without effect. The ferment of mind resulting 
from it found expression in the teaching of two 
great Indian figures of the fifteenth century, Kabir 
and Nanak. And out of it arose in due course 
the powerful community of the Sikhs. 

Nor was the invasion of Mahmid less fruitful 
regarded from a more material point of view. 
He was the forerunner of the Moghul dynasty, the 
splendour of whose sway is, perhaps, unsurpassed 
in the annals of the world, as witness the wonder- 
ful legacy of architectural beauty bequeathed by 
them to a fortunate posterity. If, as must surely 
be the case, a lovely building is but the embodi- 
ment in wood or stone of a beautiful idea—itself 
the fleeting reflection of the divine flashed in 
moments of inspiration upon the mind of man, 


AN HISTORIC HIGHWAY 55 


from some far-off and dimly apprehended realm 
of spiritual splendour—then must we conclude 
that the cultured classes of Moghul times were 
not only endowed in high degree with the vision 
that transcends the bounds of earth, but were 
fortunate also in being able to command the 
technical skill, without which their artistic genius 
could never have been given concrete expression 
for the delight and benefit of mankind. 

It may also be thought not unworthy of 
remark that among other results accruing from 
this first incursion of Islam through the narrow 
passage way of the Khyber Pass, is the addition 
of something like 70,000,000 Muhammadans to 
the vast tally of those owning allegiance to the 
British crown. 

To-day the Pass plays a less historic part. A 
state of equilibrium has been reached between the 
vast reservoirs of Central Asia and the great basin 
of the Indian plains. Like water, the human flood 
in obedience to natural law has found its own 
level. The basin has long since filled up, and such 
movement as there is through the channel pro- 
vided by the Pass represents little more than 
surface ripples blown now this way, now that, by 
the passing breeze. 

Yet the Pass, though no longer the scene of 
great migratory movements, responding for the 
most part to impulses which were instinctive 
rather than consciously purposive, is still, as it 
was before, the main land thoroughfare between 
India and Central and Western Asia. To say 
that it is not to-day the highway of nations or of 
armies, is not to say that it is not capable at any 
moment of becoming so. The British statesman 
who, towards the close of the nineteenth century, 
penned the despatch defining the policy of Great 
Britain towards the frontier, was haunted by a 
knowledge of its possibilities. From first to last, 


56 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


he was at pains to lay stress upon the determina- 
tion of the Government to abstain from interfer- 
ence in the lands beyond its administrative 
border. Nevertheless he felt himself compelled to 
order that in any readjustment of the relations 
between the Government of India and the Afridi 
tribes, the safety of the Pass was to be “ a para- 
mount consideration.’’ Whether viewed from the 
standpoint of existing obligations towards the 
Amir of Afghanistan or from that of the protec- 
tion of British subjects, the maintenance of the 
Khyber Pass as a safe artery of communication 
and of trade must be “ an essential measure.” } 

Military opinion, naturally enough, leaned 
towards the view that the object aimed at could 
best be attained by placing the Pass under effec- 
tive military control. Of the two great highways 
between India and Afghanistan—the Khyber and 
the Bolan—the latter was already in military 
occupation. If we were to be in a position to 
advance, in case of necessity, to a strategical line 
running from Kabul to Kandahar and to fulfil the 
guarantee which we had given for the integrity of 
Afghanistan, the obvious policy, it was argued, 
was to assume similar control over the former. 
Various proposals were made—the construction 
of important works at Landi Kotal, their occupa- 
tion by regular troops, and the laying of a railway 
through the Pass. 

The scheme finally adopted fell short of these 
suggestions. By an agreement made with the 
Afridis in 1881, the safety of the Pass had been 
entrusted to the Afridi tribe, whose headmen 
provided a body of men for patrol and escort 
duties. In theory, this corps was under the 
control of, and responsible to, the tribal council ; 
in practice control over it came to be exercised 


1 Despatch from Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of State for 
India, to the Government of India, dated January 28, 1898. 


AN HISTORIC HIGHWAY 57 


more and more by the political officer in charge 
of the Khyber Pass. By putting this corps on 
a more regular basis, by paying it, arming it, 
and officering it with British officers, the Govern- 
ment of India assumed authority over the Pass 
with a minimum amount of disturbance of exist- 
ing arrangements. The force which was thus 
raised for duty in the Pass became a regiment 
known as the Khyber Rifles, consisting of two 
battalions each six hundred strong, with head- 
quarters at Landi Kotal. It was placed de- 
finitely under the control of the Political Officer 
in the Khyber and was supported in case of 
necessity by a flying column of regular troops 
based on Peshawar. Nor, until a new situation 
was created by the short-lived third Afghan War, 
which broke out quite unexpectedly early in the 
summer of 1919, was the proposal for the con- 
struction of a railway proceeded with. Up to 
that time you might travel as far as Jamrud, 
nine miles from Peshawar on the road to the 
Khyber, by rail; but there you discovered that 
you had reached railhead, and if you desired to 
enter the Pass itself, you had to do so by road. 
It was well worth doing. 

The road is a British road, metalled and 
admirably graded, over the whole of whose twenty 
miles you may travel swiftly and smoothly in a 
motor car. Half-way between Jamrud and Landi 
Kotal it passes the fort of Ali Masjid, perched on 
an isolated hill which rises in the middle of a 
wild ravine, and later it debouches on to a com- 
paratively open space on which are scattered a 
few small villages in the midst of patches of 
struggling cultivation. Here on the north side 
of the road stands the fort of Landi Kotal— 
the ultimate outpost of Great Britain in the 
direction of Afghanistan. A short distance 
beyond the fort the political frontier is reached, 


58 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


and British rule and metalled roads come to an 
abrupt end. 

The ethics of the Khyber are interesting. 
The road passes through the country of a people 
with whom raiding and plundering are at once a 
business and a pastime, and the cultivation of 
blood feuds an hereditary preoccupation. Yet it 
is an unwritten law, which possesses all the 
inviolability of the laws of the Medes and 
Persians, that no man shall shoot another man 
so long as he be on the road. Whence it comes 
about that the observant traveller will notice 
long, deep trenches running from such small 
villages as are to be seen in the neighbourhood 
right up to the metalled road, so that safe access 
may be had to this curious via sacra. 

Nevertheless, the hook-nosed traders with their 
kafilahs of shaggy camels who journey between 
India and Afghanistan, take nothing for granted 
in the Khyber Pass. On two days in the week— 
Tuesdays and Fridays—the strong arm of Great 
Britain stretches out over the Pass and lifts a 
warning finger against all would-be law-breakers. 
Patrols of military police piquet the heights 
above the road, the sharp-shooters of the Khyber 
Rifles, who man the chain of block-houses from 
Jamrud to Landi Kotal, maintain a sharp look-out, 
and escorts drawn from the same force accompany 
the ascending and descending caravans. On these 
two days, and on these two days only, do the 
kafilahs take the road. Here and there on the 
mountain sides you may notice rows of small 
cairns of carefully whitewashed stones, five, six, 
seven, or eight cairns to the row. These give 
the rifleman in the nearest block-house the exact 
range—500, 600, 700, or 800 yards. It is signi- 
ficant that little things of this kind cause no 
comment in the Khyber Pass. 

At the time of which I am writing, before the 


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AN HISTORIC HIGHWAY 59 


third Afghan War, you might have noticed other 
seratchings on the mountain sides. These marked 
the tracé of the railway which was proposed but 
was not then built. It would have run up to 
the Afghan frontier, and in Afghanistan railways 
were taboo. Railways are dangerous things for 
buffer states; that, at least, is the view of the 
buffer state itself, which looks, moreover, with 
grave suspicion and dislike upon any railway 
that even approaches its frontier. Many years 
ago Russia pushed a line south from her trans- 
Caspian system. It ran up against the Afghan 
frontier as against a blind wall, and there it 
remains to this day. From the south-east Britain 
pushed her line of railway, driving it through the 
Khojak range to the desert sands on the Afghan 
frontier beyond, and there it too remains. A 
little short of Jamrud on the Peshawar—Jamrud 
line, a branch wandered off in a north-westerly 
direction. This was the beginning of a project 
much talked of at one time, and known as the 
Loi-Shilman railway. 

The idea was that it should follow the Kabul 
river and debouch on to a small open space on 
the far side of the no man’s land that lies between 
the administrative and political frontiers, thus 
providing an alternative route to the Khyber 
Pass. It was pushed by an enterprising and 
insistent soldier, and it was delayed by an auto- 
cratic and strong-minded Secretary of State who 
wanted the signature of the ruler of Afghanistan 
to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. In 
the result we got neither the railway nor the 
signature. Construction as far as Torsappa, 
twenty-three miles from Peshawar and eight or 
nine miles beyond the administrative frontier, 
had been sanctioned in 1905, and rails were 
actually laid to within four or five miles of this 
spot, when it attracted the unfavourable attention 


60 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


of the House of Commons, with the result that 
orders were issued that work on it should cease. 
I believe that something like £500,000 was spent 
on the project altogether ; but when [ last visited 
the spot in 1912, the metals so laboriously laid 
were about to be taken up again—another sad 
example of the fate which overtakes all railway 
enterprise directed towards unwilling buffer states. 

It was unfortunate for the advocates of the 
scheme that the surveys carried on beyond Tor- 
sappa, or “‘ mile 300” as it came to be known, 
were made at a time when that part of the 
frontier was stirred by one of its periodic spasms 
of unrest. The impunity with which the Zakka 
Khel inhabiting the country south of the Khyber 
had, for some years past, flouted the authority 
of Great Britain, was having its effect upon 
neighbouring tribes, and notably upon the Moh- 
mands to the north of the Pass. This unrest 
among the Mohmands was attributed by critics 
in the House of Commons to the surveys for the 
railway, which was described by Sir Charles Dilke 
as part of a project for constructing a cantonment 
at Torsappa, “in connection with which 6000 
men were to be stationed 6000 feet above the 
level of the sea in a hopeless spot where there was 
not a blade of grass for miles.” It was, of course, 
denied by the Government that there was any 
definite evidence to show that the surveys of the 
proposed railway were the cause of the Mohmand 
rising. It was even stated that the Mohmands 
nearest the country surveyed had remained 
entirely friendly. Yet a dispassionate study of 
published documents makes it difficult to believe 
that the prospect of the penetration of their 
country by a railway had not the effect of a 
strong irritant upon the Mohmands in their 
existing state of disaffection. 

It is significant that the Mohmands were joined 


AN HISTORIC HIGHWAY 61 


in their rising by a considerable body of Afghan 
subjects who had earlier shown opposition to the 
examination of the railway alignment by a rail- 
way expert, Mr. Johns, at Smatzai and Shinpokh. 
At the end of November 1907, the Political Officer 
in the Khyber telegraphed that a strong force of 
Khuda Khel and Khwaizai Mohmands were hold- 
ing the left bank of the Kabul river and were 
determined not to allow the railway survey to be 
made. And when the cause of a rising of the 
Mohmands and Afghans, which broke out in the 
following spring, was officially attributed to fear 
of an intention on our part to invade their 
territory, it became clear that the critics had 
reasonably good grounds for the conclusions which 
they drew. And so until after the third Afghan 
War, at any rate, the railway project remained in 
abeyance. 

Such, then, is the great gateway through which 
has passed the long procession of those who, 
through the centuries, have made their way with 
such momentous results to the far-stretching 
plains of Hindustan. Longer than most of the 
historic highways of the world, it has resisted the 
attack of the railway engineer. And if the soldier 
and the man of commerce find cause for satis- 
faction at the prospect of its early capitulation, 
the man of more romantic temperament who 
is untroubled by utilitarian considerations will, 
perhaps, heave a sigh of regret at the thought 
of the early disappearance of the immemorial 
methods of communication before the advent of 
the instruments of a less picturesque, if superior, 
civilisation. 


CHAPTER VI 
THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 


THE historic importance of the North-West 
Frontier has been explained; its rugged nature 
has been described. That the problems to which 
it has necessarily given rise should have taxed to 
the utmost the statesmanship of those charged 
with the duty of safeguarding India from external 
aggression, may well have been inferred from what 
has been written in the preceding chapters. 
There are, indeed, few questions which have 
demanded so large a share of the time and thought 
of successive viceroys as those concerning the re- 
lations of Great Britain with the peoples on and 
beyond the frontier. And their manner of dealing 
with them merits, therefore, careful examination. 
As has been explained already, the term 
** frontier ’’ as applied to the North-West of India 
stands for something which differs in one import- 
ant respect from the precise meaning ordinarily 
attaching to the word. The North-West Frontier 
consists not of a single geographical line, but of 
two such lines, together with the belt of territory 
enclosed between them. Such a frontier possesses 
the possibilities of complications, which cannot 
arise in the case of a simple frontier consisting of 
a single boundary-line more or less clearly de- 
marcated between one State and another, for it 
offers the option of two alternative policies. The 
paramount Power can adopt a policy of non-inter- 
62 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 63 


ference towards the inhabitants of the inter- 
mediate belt of territory, provided, of course, that 
they in their turn carry out such agreements as it 
may have been found necessary to make with 
them—such, for example, as the granting of facili- 
ties for transit trade. On the other hand, the 
existence of a neutral zone, peopled by semi- 
barbarous tribes, is a standing invitation to a 
strong and highly civilised Power to push gradu- 
ally forward to the real frontier, until the neutral 
zone has been absorbed and the frontier reduced 
to the more ordinary and simpler type. 

No better illustration of this tendency can be 
found than that of Russia in her advance across 
Asia towards India; nor could the case for a for- 
ward policy under such circumstances have been 
put with greater cogency than it was by the 
Russian Chancellor, Prince Gortchakoff, nm a 
circular note to the Powers of Europe in 1864: 
** Raids and acts of pillage,’”’ he wrote, “* must be 
put down. To do this the tribes on the frontier 
must be reduced to a state of submission. This 
result once attained, these tribes take to more 
peaceful habits, but are in turn exposed to the 
attacks of the more distant tribes against whom 
the State is bound to protect them. . . . If, the 
robbers once punished, the expedition is with- 
drawn, the lesson is soon forgotten. . . . In order 
to put a stop to this state of permanent disorder, 
fortified posts are established in the midst of these 
hostile tribes, and an influence is brought to bear 
on them which reduces them by degrees to a state 
of submission. But other more distant tribes 
beyond this outer line come in turn to threaten the 
same dangers and necessitate the same measures 
of repression. The State is thus forced to choose 
between two alternatives—either to give up this 
endless labour and to abandon its frontier to per- 
petual disturbance, or to plunge deeper and deeper 


64 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


into barbarous countries. . . . Such has been the 
fate of every country which has found itself in a 
similar position. All have been forced by imperi- 
ous necessity into this onward march, where the 
greatest difficulty is to know where to stop.” 

Great Britain had found herself precisely in 
this position. Imperious necessity had carried 
her by degrees across India, and had eventually 
landed her up against the granite walls that hem 
in the dusty trans-Indus plains. It was here that 
she decided to stay her advance. But the invita- 
tion to go further was ever present; and that it 
was not always refused may be seen from the map. 
British administration has pushed its way up the 
Kurram Valley as far as the political frontier. It 
has made considerable inroads into Waziristan. 
Nor is the policing of the great high-road which 
runs through the Khyber Pass any longer en- 
trusted to the tribes through whose territory it 
passes. And there have always been those who 
have urged that this policy of penetration should 
be pressed further. There has always been a 
school of thought, that is to say, which has advo- 
cated a forward policy. 

How long frontier policy might have remained 
a shuttlecock between the two contending schools 
it is impossible to say, had it not been for the 
action of the tribesmen themselves, which lifted 
the whole question out of the arena of controversy 
and forced a decision upon the Government. In 
June 1897 the Tochi Valley became the scene of a 
violent outbreak. A month later the Swat Valley 
rose to the cry of j2hdd at the instigation of one 
Saidulla, known as the mad fakir. Elsewhere the 
seeds of disaffection were sown and watered by 
fanatics, who rose rapidly to temporary power and 
unenviable notoriety. The delimitation of the 
boundary, drawn up under the Durand Agreement 
of 1898, was seized upon by them as a convenient 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 65 


pretext for raising the people. Throughout the 
frontier the smouldering embers of fanaticism, 
fanned into flame by the fiery preaching of men 
like the Adda Mullah, the Fakir of Swat, and the 
Mullah Sayed Akbar, blazed up with sudden and 
altogether unexpected fury. The whole rising 
was Officially described as “‘ unprecedented alike 
in the suddenness with which it broke out at each 
point, in the large extent of country affected, and 
in the simultaneous action of distinct tribes or 
sections of tribes.”’ It called for action on a large 
scale, and resulted in the expedition known as the 
Tirah Campaign. 

So far as frontier policy was concerned, these 
happenings were decisive. The military opera- 
tions were pursued with vigour; and on January 
28, 1898, as soon as their success was assured, the 
guiding principles to be observed in future rela- 
tions with the frontier tribes were laid down in a 
comprehensive despatch, penned by Lord George 
Hamilton, then Secretary of State. Two funda- 
mental ideas ran through the despatch—the 
avoidance of any extension of administrative con- 
trol over independent tribal territory, and the 
concentration of military forces to the _ best 
possible advantage to enable the Government to 
carry out their responsibilities. Thus the policy 
of non-intervention was firmly established. 

Lord Elgin, as Viceroy, had to grapple with the 
rising: it fell to his successor to give effect to the 
policy to which the rising had given birth. Lord 
Curzon threw himself mto the task with charac- 
teristic vigour. To the onlooker he gave the 
impression of being completely absorbed in his 
undertaking. His enthusiasm was infectious and 
his energy amazing. He was gifted with that 
brilliant type of imagination which is the indis- 
pensable handmaiden of successful statesmanship. 
Moreover, he possessed extensive first-hand know- 

F 


66 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


ledge of the frontier and its inhabitants, acquired 
in the course of previous travel and study. With 
a flash of insight he divined the solution of the 
military problem. British and Indian troops 
were to be withdrawn from the frontier and their 
place taken by tribal militia, supported, in case of 
necessity, by flying columns of regulars posted at 
convenient bases within, but near, the adminis- 
trative frontier. 

A more delicate problem presented itself in the 
matter of control. The administered districts on 
the frontier formed a portion of the Punjab, and 
as such were under the Lieutenant-Governor. 
The officials on the frontier were Punjab officials, 
with the consequence that, while the general direc- 
tion of frontier affairs was vested in the Govern- 
ment of India, the executive control was in the 
hands of the Punjab Government. So unsatis- 
factory a system of dual control was scarcely likely 
to work smoothly. “ Labour without responsi- 
bility ’? was the experience of the local Govern- 
ment; “responsibility without control’ that of 
the Government of India. In a despatch dated 
August 5, 1898, the Secretary of State had sug- 
gested placing the Commissioner of Peshawar 
directly under the Government of India. This 
proposal had been submitted to the Punjab 
Government at the time, and had met with whole- 
hearted condemnation at their hands, the then 
Lieutenant-Governor, Sir M. Young, declaring 
that such a change could not be brought about 
‘‘ without introducing chaos into the frontier ad- 
ministration.”” The arguments and conclusions 
of the local Government were endorsed by the 
Government of India in a despatch dated Septem- 
ber 18, 1900, in the course of which they advocated 
a more drastic solution, viz. the creation of a new 
frontier province, controlled and administered by 
officials directly under the Government of India. 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 67 


The whole question was reviewed in all its 
aspects in a masterly minute by the Viceroy him- 
self. He pointed to the fact that for years past 
the anomalies of the position had been recognised 
by a long succession of those best qualified to form 
an opinion. As far back as 1877 the Secretary of 
State had declared that the conditions under 
which the frontier had been given to the Punjab 
were obsolete. With unerring instinct he placed 
his finger upon the weak points in previous 
schemes, which had invariably prevented them 
from materialising. The grandiose project of 
Lord Lytton, who aimed at creating a huge 
frontier province running from Hazara to the 
Indian Ocean, might still “ appeal to the imagina- 
tion of the enthusiast, but was not practicable in 
fact.’’ Nevertheless, the time had come when the 
necessity for placing the actual frontier districts 
under the direct guidance and control of the 
Government of India could no longer be ignored. 
In terse and incisive phrases he summed up the 
case for change. The existing system “ had been 
reprobated by all the greatest frontier authorities 
for the last quarter of a century. It attenuated 
without diminishing the ultimate responsibility of 
the Government of India. It protracted without 
strengthening their action. It interposed between 
the Foreign Minister of India and his subordinate 
agents, not an ambassador, or a minister, or a 
consul, but the elaborate mechanism of a local 
Government, and the necessarily exalted person- 
ality of a Lieutenant-Governor. Worked as the 
system had been with unfailing loyalty and with 
profound devotion to duty, it had yet been the 
source of friction, of divided counsels, of vacilla- 
tion, of exaggerated centralisation, of interminable 
delay.”’ The whole memorandum was a brilliant 
example of careful analysis and of unimpeachable 
argument. The history of the past was probed 


68 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


and laid bare; the facts of the existing situation 
were sifted and marshalled. The chain of argu- 
ment was carried with unanswerable logic step by 
step to its inevitable conclusion. Objections were 
considered and met. The soundness of its reason- 
ing and of the conclusion arrived at was accepted 
by the Cabinet, who sanctioned the proposal in 
December of the same year “as tending to express 
and enforce the direct responsibility of the Indian 
Government for frontier affairs, and to free the 
management of frontier politics from the delay 
inseparable from the present system.’ In 1901 
the North-West Frontier Province came into 
being. 

It had been an argument of the Punjab Govern- 
ment that, being in closer contact with the frontier 
than the Government of India, they were usually 
more impressed with the risks of a forward policy 
than the more distant authority, and that they 
consequently acted as a drag upon “ the sugges- 
tions or proposals of the forward school of frontier 
politicians, the most strenuous advocates of which 
will be found in military ranks ” ;! the inference, 
of course, being that with their removal the 
Government of India might more easily be led by 
their military advisers into a policy of adventure. 
Within three years of the formation of the new 
Province, this matter was put to the test. In 
1903 certain Shiah clans were attacked by neigh- 
bouring Sunni tribes, and, though they had put up 
a successful defence, they straightway appealed 
to be taken under British protection. The appeal 
was a strong one. The clans in question had been 
uniformly friendly, and had remained loyal even 
during the convulsion leading up to the Tirah 
Campaign. The correspondence which ensued 
undoubtedly tended to show that the forebodings 
of the Punjab Government referred to above were 

1 Sir Mackworth Young, October 19, 1898. 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 69 


not altogether devoid of justification. Colonel 
Deane, the Chief Commissioner, declared himself 
strongly in favour of accepting the invitation of 
the clans, in spite of the known policy of the 
Government, which he described rather testily as 
** a forward one only when necessity compels, and 
stationary where circumstances permit.” 

Moreover, the Government of India were them- 
selves divided. Their military advisers, looking 
beyond the actual question under discussion, con- 
sidered that the time had arrived when “ the 
essential principles ’’ of the policy of non-inter- 
vention should come under reconsideration. Lord 
Kitchener, who was at the time Commander-in- 
Chief, was convinced of the advantages of a policy 
of “ peaceful penetration,” and endorsed the 
opinion of the military party that our policy 
“should contemplate the gradual and peaceful 
extension of our close control over the tribes as 
far as the Durand boundary, at any rate where 
this is necessary on strategical considerations.” 
On the other hand, those members of the Govern- 
ment who were opposed to a forward policy laid 
stress upon the known predilection of the Pathan 
tribes for managing their own affairs in their own 
way, and their intense dislike of paying revenue 
to any suzerain power. They also pointed out 
that if we carried our control up to the Durand 
line we should be brought into direct contact with 
a large section of the Afghan frontier, “ across 
which raids and counter-raids are of frequent 
occurrence, for the continuous settlement of which 
we have not yet found any adequate means.”’ 

It must have been with feelings of some satis- 
faction that the Punjab Government observed the 
presence at the Council Chamber of the wraith of 
a former Lieutenant-Governor holding up a warn- 
ing finger. Ten years earlier an almost identical 
petition had been made by Shiah clans. On the 


70 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


advice of Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick, the then Lieu- 
tenant-Governor, their request had been refused. 
He had had little doubt as to the genuineness of 
the request, but he thought that as the Shiahs 
were regarded with fanatical hatred by the great 
mass of the people who were Sunnis, “to go in 
there on their invitation and as their protectors 
would be about the very worst introduction we 
could possibly have.”’ 

Opinion in the Council Chamber being thus 
evenly balanced, the Government of India were 
not in a position to submit any definite recom- 
mendation to the Government at home. They 
thought it best to state all the facts and arguments 
for the consideration of the Secretary of State, and 
declared that on the larger question of policy they 
were content to await the decision at which His 
Majesty’s Government might arrive, “ after full 
consideration of the weighty arguments that our 
military advisers have now adduced.”’ 

The Home Government found no such diffi- 
culty in making up their mind. Within two 
months of the receipt of the despatch, the Secre- 
tary of State was able to inform the Government 
of India that, “‘after full consideration of both 
sides of the case,’’ His Majesty’s Government saw 
no sufficient reason ‘‘for incurring the risks 
attaching to the proposed extension of the tribal 
area under our control.” 

The non-interventionists were thus able to con- 
eratulate themselves on the fact that their policy 
had successfully stood the first serious test to 
which it was subjected. It was not, however, 
to remain long unchallenged. Even while the 
despatch of the Secretary of State upholding it 
was being penned, the political agent in the 
Khyber was drawing up a memorandum on the 
ageressive behaviour of the Zakka Khel, a turbu- 
lent clan of the Afridi tribe. And of the measures 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 71 


suggested, the one which he seemed to think 
‘might most probably become necessary was the 
capture and occupation of the Bazar Valley—an 
important slice of Zakka Khel territory. 
Intractable though the Zakka Khel were, the 
Government hesitated to take drastic action. A 
mission was about to be despatched to the Amir 
of Afghanistan at Kabul, and this had a salutary 
though temporary effect upon the tribes. Raid- 
ing diminished and active aggression gave place to 
an attitude of interested expectancy. After the 
first impression caused by the success of the Kabul 
mission had passed off, the Zakka Khel returned 
to their old ways, and in December 1906 the Chief 
Commissioner of Peshawar again represented that 
nothing short of the occupation of the Bazar 
Valley would effectually protect British subjects 
in the adjoining settled districts against the con- 
stant depredations from which they suffered. 
Thus, although the policy of non-intervention 
had so recently been reaffirmed, circumstances 
again conspired to give colour to the contention of 
the Punjab Government that a frontier adminis- 
tration, freed from the restraining influence of the 
local Government, would be found among the 
most powerful partisans of the forward school. It 
would be a mistake, however, to accuse the Chief 
Commissioner and his subordinates of any wilful 
desire to embark lightly upon a policy of adven- 
ture. They were the victims of circumstances 
over which they had no control. They were ex- 
periencing the imperious necessity of which Prince 
Gortchakoff had written in his famous circular 
of 1864—the almost irresistible tendency of the 
civilised Power to carry forward its own standards 
of life, to impose order where confusion prevails, 
to introduce a reasoned system of justice where 
disputes are settled by unreasoning force; in a 
word, to substitute the ideals of civilisation for 


72 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


the crude instincts of barbarism. It is a tendency 
which may acquire additional driving force from 
greed or from ambition; but at bottom it is an 
evolutionary process. It is the working in the 
domain of sociology of the natural law which 
demands the survival of the fittest. And where 
civilisation and barbarism are present, it is the 
former which is obviously the fittest to survive. 

The Government hesitated, and while they did 
so the need for action grew. By the spring of 
1907, the tale of outrage had become a formidable 
one. During the previous seven years, no less 
than 32 British subjects had been murdered, 29 
wounded, 37 kidnapped and held up to ransom, 
and a large amount of property carried off or 
destroyed. The headmen of the well- disposed 
sections of the Afridis had themselves urged upon 
the administration the desirability of a British 
occupation of the Bazar Valley, and there was a 
steadily growing danger lest the immunity of the 
Zakka Khel from punishment should have the 
result of bringing other tribes into their camp 
against us. It was clear that the limits of for- 
bearance had been reached. All attempts to 
ameliorate the situation without having recourse 
to military measures had failed, and the Govern- 
ment of India found themselves compelled by the 
inexorable logic of events to endorse the pro- 
posals of the frontier administration involving the 
occupation of tribal territory. If after occupa- 
tion we were to remain and administer the Bazar 
Valley, they wrote, “‘ we could, by making roads, 
develop it, protect the law-abiding population, 
and prevent further intrigues with Afghanistan.”’ 
The tendency was strongly at work. 

Nevertheless, the long-overdue punishment of 
the contumacious clan was to undergo yet further 
postponement. ‘The most favourable season for 
military operations was rapidly drawing to a 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 73 


close. The Commander-in-Chief was of opinion 
that they might with advantage be put off till the 
autumn, and the Secretary of State showed a 
strong disinclination to sanction any advance. 
Licence received an additional ten months’ law. 
And when the Government of India returned to 
the charge in January of the following year, and 
formulated definite proposals for the occupation 
of tribal territory, the Secretary of State showed 
symptoms of genuine alarm. ‘“‘ My sense of the 
fundamental objections to a policy of occupation 
of Zakka Khel territory,’’ he telegraphed on 
January 30, “is increased by the definite pro- 
posals in your letter of the 9th inst.”’ By the 
irony of fate his telegram crossed a telegram from 
the Government of India informing him that 
Peshawar city had just been raided by a gang of 
Zakka Khel from the Bazar Valley, sixty to eighty 
strong; that one police constable had been killed 
and others wounded, and property valued at a 
lakh of rupees carried off. This was followed by 
a further telegram in which the Government of 
India stated that, however restricted their sub- 
sequent action might be, the necessity for im- 
mediate punitive measures was so great that 
action could no longer be delayed. 

In this the Secretary of State found himself 
compelled to acquiesce, though he gave his sanc- 
tion reluctantly and subject to the condition that 
a strict time limit should be imposed upon the 
punitive operations in the Bazar Valley, and that 
they should entail no occupation or annexation. 
So fearful was he lest the Government of India 
were about to commit themselves to a definitely 
forward policy, that he despatched a further tele- 
gram four days later which sounded almost like a 
ery of despair: “‘ It must be clearly understood, 
I repeat, that the end in view is limited strictly 
to the punishment of the Zakka Khel, and not 


74 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


occupation or annexation of tribal territory, 
either directly or Cys immediately or 
ultimately.” 

Sir James Willcocks, to whom the expedition 
was entrusted, struck with exemplary swiftness 
and complete success. The tribesmen were stag- 
gered by the rapidity of his advance, and sustained 
a crushing defeat. The character of the fighting 
is sufficiently indicated by their casualties, 
which amounted between February 15th and 
21st to a total exceeding those of all the Afridis 
throughout the Tirah Campaign. By the end 
of the month peace was declared, and on March 
the 8rd the Political Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel 
(afterwards Sir George) Roos-Keppel, to whose 
skill and knowledge of the frontier the successful 
outcome of the expedition was largely due, was 
able to report that a settlement of the Zakka Khel 
question had been arrived at which he believed 
would prove durable, and which would improve 
our relations not only with the Zakka Khel but 
with the whole of the Afridi clans. 

Not a yard of tribal territory had been annexed, 
while the Afridis as a whole stood surety for the 
future good behaviour of the Zakka Khel, hold- 
ing themselves responsible jointly and severally 
for the various clans. In face of difficulties of 
the most formidable nature, the policy of non- 
intervention had again triumphed. 

Lest, however, it be assumed from the repeated 
successes of this policy that the pressure upon the 
civilised Power to advance need no longer be 
treated seriously, it is well to try to assess the 
magnitude of the obstacles which have had to be 
overcome. ‘The events referred to above have 
centred in the main round the block of the frontier 
populated by Afridis. Further south, in the 
neighbourhood of the Gomal river, dwells the most 
troublesome, perhaps, of all the frontier tribes, 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 75 


namely, the Mahsud Waziris. The story of our 
relations with this tribe during recent times gives 
a fair measure of the extent of the pressure upon 
us to advance our frontier which has had to be 
resisted in the past, and which may in the end 
compel us to bow before the inexorable logic of 
the arguments set forth in the famous Russian 
circular. 


CHAPTER VII 
THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER (continued) 


WE may take the year 1900 as a convenient one 
in which to pick up the threads of the story of our 
dealings with the Mahsud Waziris, for the autumn 
of that year was indeed a time of crisis in their 
history. 

No very cordial relations are to be expected 
between a civilised Government with a passion for 
law and order and a tribe “‘ whose record for 
all time has been one of thieving and raiding.” 
Relations will necessarily be characterised at all 
times by an uncomfortable tension never very 
far removed from breaking point; and for a 
succession of years the tightly strung thread of 
forbearance had been subjected to a strain which 
sooner or later was bound to prove fatal. The 
more lawless element in the tribe had for long 
been playing fast and loose with the sixth and 
eighth commandments, and this with a reckless 
disregard for the feelings of a people for whom 
the Decalogue is not only a divine ordinance, 
but a code by which they have decided that it 
is both proper and convenient to regulate their 
lives. 

It was pure chance that took me to the borders 
of Waziristan at the precise moment when the 
thread snapped; and it was a mere coincidence 
that I happened to travel along the forty miles 
of hot and dusty road between Dera Ismael Khan 

76 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 77 


and ‘Tank in the company of the experienced fron- 
trer officer representing the Government whose 
sense of law and order had been so flagrantly 
outraged. Our objects had nothing in common. 
His was one of moment—the presentation of an 
ultimatum to a jirgar of the offending tribe. Mine 
was one of no interest to any one except myself. 
I was, in fact, bent merely upon obtaining a 
specimen of the straight-horned Markhor, and at 
Tank I and my companion parted. For a long, 
hot day I pushed south along the edge of the 
mountains through the dry, brown fog of a sand- 
storm, and then turned up the valley of the Gomal 
river. Later I turned south again away from 
Waziristan and into the mountains of the more 
friendly Sheranis. 

From the point of view of sport my trip was 
not a success. At the approach of winter the 
Ghilzais were migrating from the rigours of their 
own hills to the sunshine and the warmth of the 
plains, with the result that game was disturbed 
and everywhere on the move. Moreover, my 
chances were handicapped by a too faithful 
observance of duty on the part of my escort, 
members of the border military police, who 
dogged my footsteps with patient perseverance 
from morn to night, and who showed a far more 
acute interest in the footprints of an occasional 
Mahsud than in the spoor of the game that I 
was after. 

At nights I retired within the four mud walls 
of a small blockhouse which enjoyed recognition 
on large-scale maps under the title of Kashmir 
Kar, and listened to the keen-eyed Jamadar in 
charge as he related tales of plunder and sudden 
death. The Mahsud question was clearly one of 
burning interest at Kashmir Kar—and not with- 
out reason, as subsequent events were to prove. 
The savage tribesmen had enjoyed impunity too 


78 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


long to prove amenable to the terms demanded 
at the Tank jirgar, and a blockade of their territory 
was enforced. For some time they kicked fiercely 
against the pressure thus brought to bear on them, 
and Kashmir Kar became the scene of one of 
those far-off tragedies that embroider the fringes 
of Indian Empire, and that may, or may not, 
form the subject of a newspaper paragraph under 
some such heading as “ frontier incident.’” The 
Mahsuds came down upon it in force. They 
breached its defences, carried off its arms, and 
put some portion at least of its small garrison 
to the sword. 

This, together with other outrages, proved the 
ineffectiveness of a mere passive blockade, and 
sterner measures were taken in hand. The 
blockade was maintained, but to this were added 
series of sudden and unexpected raids by armed 
forces into the beleaguered territory. This new 
method of coercion proved surprisingly effective. 
It was not adopted until the late autumn of 1901, 
and by the beginning of January 1902 the re- 
calcitrant tribe gave in. By March 11 all the 
conditions demanded by Government had been 
fulfilled, and the blockade was raised. 

It is worth while inquiring why it was that 
the efforts made during many years to come to 
terms with the Mahsuds were uniformly un- 
successful ; because such inquiry will bring out 
the importance of highly specialised knowledge 
in dealing with the independent tribes. ‘“‘ If 
there is a case in which the conclusions of the 
uninformed are perilous,” wrote Lord Curzon, 
“it is that of tribal policy.’”’ Nor is a general 
knowledge of frontier customs and characteristics 
sufficient. It is special knowledge of the parti- 
cular tribe to be dealt with that is required. It 
cannot be assumed that because one method of 
dealing with the tribes in one part of the frontier 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 79 


proves successful, it will necessarily prove equally 
successful when applied to other tribes in other 
parts of the border. It was in part because this 
assumption was made that we failed so often in 
our attempts to negotiate with the Mahsuds. 
Methods which had succeeded with the Baluchi 
tribes under the powerful guidance of Sir Robert 
Sandeman were applied in the case of the Mahsuds, 
and failed lamentably. The reason was simple, 
but for long remained unrecognised for want of 
a little understanding. 

In Baluchistan we dealt with the tribes through 
their chiefs, and this was a method which was 
eminently suited to their case, for the tribesmen 
looked up to and rendered implicit obedience to 
their headmen. Loyalty to constituted authority 
was bred in their bone and part of their im- 
memorial custom and tradition. We endeavoured 
to deal with the Mahsuds in the same way, and 
this was a method which was wholly unsuited 
to their case, for among the Mahsuds no such 
thing as reverence for authority was known. 
Whatever else he might be, the Mahsud Waziri 
was no respecter of persons. His tribal organisa- 
tion was intensely democratic. His leading char- 
acteristic was a “fierce love of political and 
municipal independence,” and his soul was per- 
meated with a fanatical dislike of the foreigner. 
Added to this was the highly important circum- 
stance that while we were in occupation of Baluchi 
territory, far from our being in occupation of 
Mahsud country we were irrevocably determined, 
under the policy of non-intervention, not to 
undertake the responsibilities which annexation 
would impose upon us. 

When, therefore, about the year 1890, without 
one of the chief conditions necessary to success 
—namely, occupation—we endeavoured to apply 
the system in vogue in Baluchistan to the tribes 


80 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


of Waziristan, we were simply asking for trouble. 
The headmen whom we set up, and whom we 
proposed to hold responsible for the behaviour of 
the tribes, were incapable of exercising authority 
over them. The headmen—or Maliks—were 
themselves well aware of their own limitations. 
They pocketed the subsidies which we paid them, 
and in many instances, no doubt, did their best 
to carry out their part of the contract—not 
always without results fatal to themselves. An 
illuminating but tragic demonstration of the 
instability of the foundations upon which the 
system was based was afforded within three 
years of its introduction, when, in 1893, an 
Englishman, Mr. Kelly, was murdered by the 
tribesmen in Zhob. Two of the murderers were 
eventually handed over by the Maliks, and were 
sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. The 
surprising inadequacy of the punishment awarded 
was explained by the introducer of the system 
to be due to the fact that “‘ so long as our control 
over the Waziri country has to be entirely 
exercised from without and we are forbidden 
access to it, no matter how well disposed the 
maliks may be it is impracticable for them to 
go beyond certain limits.” How narrow these 
limits were, became apparent when three of the 
leading Maliks who had effected the surrender of 
the criminals were in their turn murdered by the 
tribesmen. 

The necessity of exacting retribution for this 
act of insolent defiance seems to have been lost 
sight of under stress of disorders on a larger 
scale which led to an expedition in 1894-95. 
The settlement of 1895 increased the allowances 
to the Maliks, but left untouched the system 
which, “worked by enthusiastic supporters who 
claim for it an ethical superiority, has after a 
short time landed us in an wmpasse of unavenged 


ae 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 81 


bloodshed and rapine,”’ with the result that by 
the time of my visit in the autumn of 1900 things 
were as bad as, if not worse than, before. It was 
laid down, with unanswerable logic, by those 
who knew the Pathans, that one of two things 
must be done if any improvement was to be 
effected. Either the condition essential to the 
success of the Maliki system must be fulfilled, 
namely, the occupation of the country—which 
the Maliks themselves desired, but which the 
tribesmen emphatically did not; or the system 
must be changed. 

Government had no difficulty in deciding in 
favour of the latter alternative, and at the Jjirgar 
called together on November the 8th, 1900, to 
which reference has already been made, the 
Mahsuds were informed of Government’s inten- 
tions. A fine of 1,00,000 rupees was imposed 
in punishment of past offences, and, failing pay- 
ment by a definite date, a blockade of the country 
was threatened. So far as the future was con- 
cerned Government would deal with the tribes- 
men themselves, and not with their representa- 
tives. Similarly, the tribe, or sections of the tribe, 
would be held responsible for good order, and the 
allowances paid hitherto to the Maliks would 
be handed to the tribe to be distributed as they 
liked. 

The jirgar were loud in their protestations of 
good intentions ; but these failing to materialise, 
the blockade was put into force. How this was 
succeeded by more aggressive tactics, resulting in 
the speedy submission of the tribesmen, has 
already been told. What was of greater interest 
even than the submission of the tribe was the 
fact that “ the pressure of the offensive blockade 
rapidly matured what had been silently growing 
—the authoritative tribal jirgar.”” Thus an 
agency which at least possessed the merit of 

G 


82 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


enjoying the confidence of the tribe was firmly 
established, and the exotic system, which for a 
decade had rendered abortive every effort of 
Government to bring about an improvement in a 
harassing situation, came to a salutary end. 

Nevertheless, it is still a question whether in 
the end the pressure upon the civilised Power 
to advance will not overcome the most dogged 
determination to remain where we are. The 
ereatest triumph of the policy of non-intervention 
was the state of the frontier during the World War. 
The Amir of Afghanistan had given a pledge of 
benevolent neutrality to the Government of India 
at the beginning of the War, and had loyally 
resisted the various influences which were brought 
to bear upon him to break it. Throughout these 
desperate years, when the fate of Great Britain 
hung in the balance, the tribes had remained 
surprisingly quiet. “In a world at war it is 
curious and pleasing to be able to report that 
the North-West Frontier has no history for the 
year 1918-19.” So wrote Sir George Roos- 
Keppel. Yet precisely at the time when one 
would least have expected a recurrence of trouble, 
namely, at the conclusion of the World War, 
from which Great Britain had emerged victorious, 
the frontier was once more thrown into a state of 
turmoil, and Great Britain engaged for a third 
time in a war with Afghanistan. “ At no period 
in the history of British rule on this frontier 
has there been such a record of tribal lawless- 
ness.” Thus Sir G. Ry ac BDC successor a 
year later. 

When, at the Baer of the second Afghan 
War in 1880, Great Britain had recognised Abdur 
Rahman as Amir, she had contracted a treaty 
with him under which she had undertaken to 
assist Afghanistan against aggression from with- 
out, provided that he followed unreservedly the 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 83 


advice of the British Government in regard to 
his external relations. On the death of Abdur 
Rahman and the succession of Habibullah, this 
agreement was re-enacted by a treaty signed at 
Kabul on March the 21st, 1905, in words drawn 
up by the new Amir himself, who, for some reason 
unknown to me, took exception to the text of 
the treaty drawn up in the usual form and 
submitted by the British envoy, Mr. (now Sir 
Louis) Dane, for his acceptance. The text as 
finally signed by the two contracting parties, if 
somewhat lacking in minute precision, at least 
had the advantage of being both comprehensive 
and simple. It ran as follows: 


He is God. Extolled be His Perfection. 


Then followed the titles of the two signatories, 
after which : 


His said Majesty does hereby agree to this, that in 
the principles and in the matters of subsidiary import- 
ance of the Treaty regarding internal and external 
affairs, and of the engagements which His Highness my 
late father, that is Zia-ul-millat-wa-ud-din, who has found 
mercy, may God enlighten his tomb! concluded and 
acted upon with the Exalted British Government, I 
also have acted, am acting, and will act upon the same 
agreement and compact, and I will not contravene them 
in any dealing or in any promise. 


Next followed a paragraph in which the British 
Signatory pledged the British Government to 
observe previous agreements. The final para- 
graph of this singular document set forth the date 
according to the Muhammadan and Christian 
calendars, and was followed by the Persian seal 
of the Amir and the words : 


This is correct. I have sealed and signed. 
Amin HABIBULLAH. 


84 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


How loyally he acted up to it and in what good 
stead his loyalty stood Great Britain during the 
Great War has been stated already. 

On February the 20th, 1919, the world was 
startled by the news that Habibullah Khan, Amir 
of Afghanistan, had been assassinated. ‘The news 
was unfortunately true. Returning from an ex- 
cursion, he had pitched his camp in the Kullah 
Gosh Pass, and after catching some fish in a 
neighbouring stream had retired to rest. It has 
been stated that on landing the fish which he 
had caught he became pensive, dwelling upon the 
uncertainty of life, and that he exclaimed, * Thus 
man, too, ceases to exist when the hand of death 
suddenly lifts him out of his element of life.” 
The same night the hand of death stole silently 
and unseen into the King’s tent, and lifted him 
out of the element of life. He was found with a 
bullet in his left temple; but “the Angel of 
Death had departed, leaving no trace behind him 
save the body of Amir Habibullah Khan lying un- 
disturbed in his grim, motionless, and lifeless 
majesty.” } 

To the outside world the news came as a pro- 
found shock. Writing a year later, the official 
recorder of current events in the service of the 
Government of India observed that, remarkable 
though it might seem in an eastern country, where 
the most jealously guarded secrets have a habit 
of leaking out, mystery still surrounded both the 
motives and the authors of the crime.” 

In Afghanistan itself, if we may believe Dr. 
Abdul Ghani, no such mystery existed. Opinion 
hostile to the Amir had long been growing. His 
love of ease and amusement and his neglect of the 


1 Pr. Abdul Ghani, from whose ‘* Review of the Political Situation 
in Central Asia ’’ I have derived this account of the Amir’s death. 

2 “ India in 1919,” being a report prepared for presentation to 
Parliament in accordance with the requirements of the 26th section 
of the Government of India Act, by L. F. Rushbrook Williams. 


THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTIER 85 


affairs of state disgusted the ardent spirits of the 
Young Afghan party which had come into exist- 
ence, filled with ideas of the rights of man. His 
Kuropean tastes alienated Moslem sentiment. 
His lavish expenditure from public revenues upon 
his personal whims called forth the most adverse 
comment. And, finally, his emphatic rejection of 
the request of a Turko-German mission either to 
call a holy war himself or to permit the tribes of 
the frontier to harry the British as the enemies of 
Islam, excited widespread suspicion and animosity 
against him. A spirit hostile to autocracy had 
been cleverly fostered by one Sardar Mahmud Beg 
Tarsi—who had lived much in Turkey, where he 
had imbibed the sentiments and opinions of the 
Young Turk party—by means of a newspaper, the 
** Siraj al Akbar,” which he had started with the 
encouragement of the Amir himself. “ His pro- 
ficiency in the Persian language drew from his 
pen, under the garb of eulogisms of the Amir, 
some scathing denunciations of the stagnancy of 
Afghanistan. He administered sugar - coated 
quinine, which was swallowed with an expression 
of pleasure and gratitude.’’1 A secret society 
was formed, and anonymous letters warning him 
against a life of idleness and pleasure, and adjuring 
him to give attention to the affairs of state, were 
despatched to the Amir, who, however, turned a 
deaf ear to all such entreaties. It became a cur- 
rent saying in the bazaars of Kabul that he was 
lucky, for he had long since given up the kingdom, 
yet the kingdom did not jettison him. During 
the usual celebrations of the Amir’s birthday in 
Kabul at the end of 1918, a shot was heard in the 
town, and the bullet of a revolver fell in Habi- 
bullah’s car as he passed through Shore bazaar. 
It was but a few weeks later that he became the 
target of a second shot, with the tragic result 
1 Dr. Abdul Ghani. 


86 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


above described. When all that has been said 
above is borne in mind, subsequent events, 
and particularly the outbreak of the third 


Afghan War, so puzzling at the time, become 
intelligible. 





SLVELV IN LV, do dO NAGYVYS AR, OL GONVALNY SA: dan Loa LInoly Vato Ty 


-/ tn 
L AYVid 


ores: 


= 
e 
Se 
oe 
ee 








CHAPTER VIII 
THE THIRD AFGHAN WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH 


Witn the death of Habibullah the customary 
struggle for the throne ensued. Sardar Nasrullah 
Khan, brother of the dead king, proclaimed him- 
self Amir in Jelalabad ; Prince Amanullah Khan, 
son of the late Amir, did the same thing in Kabul. 
And it was Amanullah who carried the country, 
and, what was of supreme importance, the army, 
with him. He had, however, to secure the sup- 
port of the Young Afghan party, and in a pro- 
clamation issued soon after his accession he 
declared that he accepted the crown only on con- 
dition that all co-operated with him in his policy, 
which he summarised as freedom for the in- 
dividual, subject to his obedience to “‘ the sacred 
law of Muhammad and civil and military laws,” 
and, most important of all, independence and free- 
dom both internal and external for Afghanistan. 
In his official letter to the Viceroy, informing him 
of his accession, he likewise wrote of the “‘ in- 
dependent and free Government of Afghanistan ”’ 
being ready to conclude “‘ such agreements and 
treaties with the mighty Government of England ”’ 
as might be useful in the way of commercial ad- 
vantages to the two Governments. 

Nevertheless, his position was by no means an 
easy one. The disturbances which broke out in 
the Punjab in the spring of 1919 reacted upon 
Afghanistan. To many it seemed that a golden 

87 


88 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


opportunity of recovering from what was regarded 
as Habibullah’s criminal mistake in refusing to 
raise the standard of jihad had been vouchsafed 
by Providence to a faithful people. The Young 
Afghan party and the army clamoured for action. 
How great was the pressure from the former was 
tacitly admitted by Dr. Abdul Ghani, himself a 
member of the Afghan delegation which discussed 
the terms of peace at Rawal Pindi in August 1919, 
at the conclusion of the third Afghan War, later 
on. It was to win over the Young Afghan party, 
he has told us, that the Afghan plenipotentiaries 
insisted on the absolute independence of Afghan- 
istan, both internal and external, as a cardinal 
condition of peace. While the Amir hesitated a 
reaction against him set in. What, then, was he 
to do? Afghan agents in India were plying him 
with wildly exaggerated accounts of the situation 
in the Punjab, and it is easy to understand that, 
relying upon these reports, he seized the oppor- 
tunity of consolidating his position at home by 
focussing attention upon a popular adventure 
across the frontier. 

Karly in May the British officials on the fron- 
tier received information of a special Durbar, at 
which the Amir launched his enterprise. Weep- 
ing bitterly, it was said, he read aloud letters from 
India, and said, “‘ See the tyranny exercised upon 
our brethren in India; and more, tyranny has 
seized Baghdad and the Holy Places. I ask you: 
Are you prepared for Holy War? If so, gird up 
your loins, for the time has come.’’ Later a pro- 
clamation was read in the Hadda Mulla Mosque, 
on which the mullahs all voted for jihad, and 
emissaries were sent forth to raise the tribes. 

Actual hostilities began with acts of aggression 
on the Khyber border, in the course of which the 
water-supply at Landi Kotal was interfered with, 
and five coolies employed on the water-works were 


THE THIRD AFGHAN WAR 89 


killed. It was only in the central section of the 
~ frontier, however, that the enterprise met with 
any appreciable success. An advance from Khost 
by a force under General Nadir Khan compelled 
the evacuation of a number of our militia posts in 
Waziristan, with most unfortunate results, for 
Wana was occupied by an Afghan force, and the 
Mahsuds and Wazirs rose. Elsewhere the adven- 
ture met with speedy disillusionment. The fort 
of Spin Baldak, six miles across the border from 
New Chaman, the British railhead in Baluchistan, 
reputed the strongest in all Afghanistan, was 
blown to pieces with high-explosive shell. In the 
neighbourhood of the Khyber the Afghan forces 
were rapidly driven back, their advance base at 
Dakka taken, and bombs dropped by aircraft on 
Jalalabad and Kabul. By the third week in May 
suggestions for an armistice were already being 
put forward by the Afghan Commander-in-Chief, 
and following a ding-dong correspondence between 
the two Governments a truce was arranged and 
representatives of the two countries met at Rawal 
Pindi on July the 26th. On August the 8th a 
treaty of peace was signed. Afghanistan retained 
her independence—internal and external—and 
lost her subsidy; Great Britain obtained the 
frontier which she claimed and the agreement of 
Afghanistan to its demarcation west of the Khyber 
Pass. It was further arranged that another 
Afghan mission would be received by Great 
Britain in six months’ time, “‘ for the discussion 
and settlement of matters of common interest to 
the two Governments and the re-establishment of 
the old friendship on a satisfactory basis.”’ 

In pursuance of this arrangement an Afghan 
delegation, under the leadership of Sardar 
Mahmud Beg Tarsi, spent the summer of 1920 on 
the cool hill-tops at Mussurie discussing a number 
of matters discursively with the urbane and 


90 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


amazingly patient representative of Great Britain, 
Mr., now Sir Henry, Dobbs. And, later, a British 
delegation under Sir H. Dobbs proceeded to 
Kabul, where a year was spent in long drawn-out 
negotiations, resultmg in a treaty signed on 
November the 22nd, 1921, under which the in- 
dependence of Afghanistan was definitely recog- 
nised, and the appointment of an Afghan Minister 
to the Court of St. James, in addition to consular 
officers in various cities in India, agreed to. An 
agreement between Afghanistan and Russia for 
the appointment of Russian consuls at Kandahar 
and Jalalabad was revoked and British consuls 
accepted in their stead. Hach contracting party 
agreed to give the other notice of any major opera- 
tions which it might feel called upon to take for 
the preservation of order among the tribes on its 
frontier. 

Such was the outcome of the third Afghan 
War. It pleased both belligerents to regard 
themselves as the victors. The claim made by 
Afghanistan that she had fought for and won her 
independence was discounted by Great Britain 
letting it be known that this concession would 
have been made in any case, as a reward for the 
great services of the Amir Habibullah. Such 
considerations were not permitted to disturb 
the atmosphere of complacency through which 
Afghans viewed the result, and a monument to 
victory, at the foot of which reposes the British 
Lion with one leg chained, adds to the picturesque- 
ness of the streets of Kabul.* 

Some space has been devoted to the third 
Afghan War because of its effect upon the 
frontier. If the tribes were slow to rise, they 
became a serious menace to peace long after 
hostilities with Afghanistan had ceased. And what 
was of grave import was the fact that under stress 

1 According to Mr. A. Moore, who visited Kabul in 1922. 


Oe 


THE THIRD AFGHAN WAR 91 


_ of these events the props upon which the policy 
of non-intervention rested, one by one crumpled 
and gave way. A number of small posts held by 
tribal militia, upon which the security of the 
frontier depended, had to be abandoned, with 
disastrous effects upon the tribesmen’s moral. 
The tribal levies themselves, including the famous 
Khyber Rifles, proved unequal to the strain, and 
either deserted in large numbers or had to be 
disbanded. Moreover, our training of these men 
proved a double-edged weapon, as we soon realised 
when we had to send an expedition into their 
country. That the frontier was well armed was 
only too well known. Even as far back as the 
Tirah Campaign of 1897 it had been noticed that 
the tribes were better armed than in the past, 
and inquiry established the fact that an arms 
traffic of formidable dimensions was being carried 
on between the tribesmen of Afghanistan and a 
cosmopolitan group of traders operating on the 
shores of the Persian Gulf. The receiving depot 
was Muscat, whence the arms found their way to 
the shores of Makran and across desert routes to 
the mountains of Afghanistan. The traffic steadily 
increased until 1907, when the value of the imports 
of arms into Muscat was returned at over 
£250,000. Thereafter stern measures were taken 
to smash the traffic; but by then the frontier 
was liberally armed. It was not only the quantity 
and character of the arms which they possessed, 
however, that now rendered the Mahsuds so 
formidable a foe. They displayed a compre- 
hensive knowledge of fire discipline and minor 
tactics—the fire discipline and tactics which we 
had taught the levies. In a single engagement 
on January the 14th, 1920, our casualties amounted 
to 9 British officers killed and 6 wounded and 10 
Indian officers and 365 Indian other ranks killed 
or wounded. The Tirah Campaign of 1897-98 


92 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


had been responsible for a little over 2000 
casualties, 558 killed and 1705 wounded. The 
operations of 1919-21 resulted in the loss of 
over 5000 lives, and a total casualty list—dead, 
wounded, and missing—of nearly 10,000. Such 
figures are significant. 

No better evidence of the increasing pressure 
upon the civilised Power to advance can be 
adduced than that provided by statistics of the 
raids and the resulting casualties during the days 
following the third Afghan War. During the 
year 1919-20, no fewer than 611 raids took place 
in the Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, and Dera Ismail 
Khan districts, resulting in the killing of 298, 
the wounding of 392, and the kidnapping of 463 
British subjects; and the looting of property of 
an estimated value of 30 lakhs of rupees. During 
the same period 41 raids were repelled, 119 raiders 
were killed, 80 wounded, and 41 captured. It is 
significant that the author of the official publica- 
tion from which the above figures have been taken 
draws a contrast between the state of affairs 
north and south of the Gomal, “ where our sphere 
of administration extends right up to the Durand 
ines 

Some modification of the policy of non- 
interference was indicated by the Viceroy in the 
course of a speech to the Legislature on August 
the 20th, 1920, when he said that “‘ the continual 
and gratuitous provocation ”’ could no longer be 
suffered, and that it had been decided, therefore, 
that troops should remain in occupation of 
Central Waziristan, that mechanical transport 
roads should be constructed throughout the 
country, and a broad-gauge railway extended from 
Jamrud through the Khyber Pass to the Afghan 
frontier. 

For the benefit of the Mahsuds a jirgar was held 

1 “ India in 1920,” by L. F. Rushbrook Williams. 


THE THIRD AFGHAN WAR 93 


at Tank on November the 5th, 1921, which was 
~ taken advantage of by Major-General Matheson, 
G.O.C., Waziristan Force, to dot the 2’s and cross 
the ts of the Viceroy’s statement. The Govern- 
ment would remain in occupation of Mahsud 
territory as long as it pleased, but there was no 
intention of introducing the regular administra- 
tion of an Indian district. No land revenue 
would be demanded, at any rate for the next 
twenty years, nor for the next five years would 
any court fees be levied nor any toll in kind. 
At the conclusion of that period a light toll in 
kind and an eight-anna court fee would be charged. 
No forced enlistment would take place, and, 
generally speaking, the occupied territory would 
be administered on tribal lines and in accordance 
with tribal usage. Allowances would be paid for 
services rendered in the restoration and mainten- 
ance of law and order. 

All these changes certainly constituted some 
departure from a policy of strict non-intervention. 
Will they eventually lead to an advance to the 
political frontier ? Such an advance will not be 
made if it can possibly be avoided. It would be 
excessively costly, which is in itself a grave 
objection in view of the very exiguous resources 
at the disposal of the Indian Government. It 
will be avoided if it is found possible to remove 
the main cause of frontier unrest without it. 
The root cause of frontier trouble is economic. 
A man who was intimately acquainted with China 
once said that the problem of that country was 
the problem of filling three stomachs with one 
bowl of rice.t. The problem of the frontier is 
much the same. The hardy tribesman looks 
down from the hungry fastnesses of his own 
highland home upon the rich abundance of the 
plains spread temptingly at his feet. His reason- 

1 Mr. J. O. P. Bland. 


94 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


ing is simple and is not complicated by ethical 
considerations. He swoops down and gathers in 
the fruit so plainly intended by Providence—so 
it appears to him—for his consumption. It is 
difficult to gauge the relative value of life and the 
rupee on the frontier—the discount at which the 
former stands and the premium which is placed 
upon the latter—until one has gathered it from 
the people themselves. Let one of them speak. 
Muhammad Khan was a typical tribesman. 
He was arrested by a constable at whom he fired 
two shots from a revolver for no other reason 
than that the constable, seeing him loitering in 
the neighbourhood of the city gate, asked him his 
business. He was a young man; but his life, 
brief as it was, had been full of episode. What 
seemed to rankle in his mind was the fact that, 
though he had always been of a religious turn of 
mind, trouble had seldom passed him by. At the 
age of twenty he had experienced a bitter domestic 
misfortune, his wife having been seduced by a 
neighbour. “I intended to murder him,’ he 
declared ; ‘ but fearing that I might be account- 
able for it before God, I put it off until I had 
sought the opinion of a mullah.” The mullah 
was apparently of an accommodating disposition, 
for he was advised that if he left his country he 
was at liberty to murder any one. Later he 
drifted to Asmas, well known to the wardens of 
the marches as the centre of a colony of intractable 
folk, known as the Hindustani Fanatics. Here 
he became the disciple of one, Moulvie Abdullah, 
to whom he swore implicit obedience. It was not 
long before his fortitude was put to the test, for 
he was bidden to go forth and shoot one Nasrullah 
Khan, after which he was to return or die in the 
attempt. It is typical of the frontier tempera- 
ment that he accepted this order as a matter of 
course. He sallied forth to do as bidden, and it 


THE THIRD AFGHAN WAR 95 


was through no fault of his that the enterprise 
“miscarried. 

His next errand was to British territory, where 
he was instructed to commit dacoities. “I 
inquired whether we should commit dacoities for 
rifles or for money?” To which query he 
received the reply—* For both.’”’ More interest- 
ing still, he was not to refrain from committing 
dacoities against Hindus or Mussalmans, since 
being British subjects they were all infidels. 

Muhammad Khan made casual mention of a 
tragic frontier episode which had come his way— 
the murder while asleep of an Englishman for his 
money. He told how the murderers had been 
given up to the British authorities, and he com- 
mented laconically upon this betrayal, *‘ For this 
also those who handed them over got some money 
from the British.”” The murderers, it appears, 
were shot by the British; but what was ap- 
parently of greater interest to Muhammad Khan 
was a pleasing little intrigue which followed upon 
this calamity. ‘“‘ The deceased had a very beauti- 
ful sister, and both Salimullah and Obeidullah 
wanted her.” The latter, being already possessed 
of a full quota of wives, succeeded in wresting her 
from Salimullah by getting her married to a 
relative of his own. This man was, according to 
Muhammad Khan, only a nominal husband, and 
Obeidullah was satisfied of his desire. 

Two of his accomplices in a dacoity were 
captured, and the subsequent happenings em- 
phasise the value of the rupee. “One was 
released in exchange for one rupee, the other for 
five.’ He himself fell into the hands of a canal 
guard. The matter proved susceptible of arrange- 
ment—* I gave him two rupees, and he released 
me.’ Other exploits, in one of which he killed 
two men while in pursuit of a comparatively 
paltry sum of money, led to his becoming a 


96 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


proclaimed offender in British territory, for which 
reason he objected to orders which he received 
to convey a message from a mullah in tribal 
territory to a mullah over the border. “I said 
that some other man should go; but I was told 
that martyrdom had to come some day, and that 
it was right that I should become a martyr.” } 

Muhammad Khan was one tribesman of many 
thousands, all of whom make similar estimates 
of the relative value of life and the rupee. Can 
Great Britain, then, without being driven to 
occupy and administer tribal territory up to the 
frontier of Afghanistan, remove the root cause 
of this attitude of the frontier mind towards these 
fundamentals ? Experiments have from time to 
time been made. The enlistment of tribesmen 
in various bodies of militia gave employment and 
sustenance to a certain number of the younger 
men. In 1910 the ranks of the army were thrown 
open to the Mahsud Waziris, and a year later 
employment was found for an additional 2000 
men of the same tribe on the construction of 
railways and other public works. These experi- 
ments were not without promise ; but confidence 
in them was rudely shaken, for the time at any 
rate, by the effects of the European and Afghan 
Wars. It was found necessary to close the ranks 
of the army to all trans-frontier tribesmen; and 
with some honourable exceptions, notably the 
Kurram and Mohmand corps and the Chitral 
scouts, the militias failed to stand the supreme 
test of a religious war championed by the Amir 
of Afghanistan. 

With the conclusion of the short-lived Afghan 
War, efforts were made once more to find suitable 
employment for the tribesmen. The militias were 

1 J have given the narrator of these events the name of Muhammad 


Khan. Except for making similar changes in the names of other per- 
sons mentioned, I have summarised his story from the account which he 


' himself gave of his career. 


a eS 


THE THIRD AFGHAN WAR 97 


reorganised. It was realised that they had tended 
“to become too regular. Into bodies of men in- 
tended originally to play the part of police, had 
crept by degrees the training, the discipline, the 
drill, and the uniform of the soldier. And when 
the crisis came, the men whose proper function 
was the policing of roads and the escorting of 
caravans were called upon to play the much more 
desperate part of a military screen covering the 
mobilisation of the regular army. It is arguable 
that if the militias failed at this supreme test, it 
was because it was one to which they ought never 
to have been subjected. With the re-forming of 
the tribal levies, all tendency towards regularising 
them was thrust sedulously out of sight. Atten- 
tion was concentrated upon creating organisations 
irregular in fact as well as in name, bodies of men, 
as one authority put it, “incapable of forming 
fours, but thoroughly acquainted with the country 
and the people, able to move as rapidly and 
silently as the raiders they are out to catch.” 
Out of this reaction against the regularising of the 
levy corps and the enthusiasm for the essentially 
irregular, emerged the Khassadar, a tribesman 
undrilled, undisciplined, and ununiformed, the 
bearer of his own and not of the Government’s 
rifle, distinguishable from the freebooter by 
reason only of the fact that in return for Govern- 
ment pay he agreed to suppress instead of foster- 
ing raiding. With the tribesmen themselves the 
Khassadar idea caught on; and it has certainly 
made an admirable start. With the formation of 
the Khyber Khassadars, raids in a single district 
—that of Peshawar—dropped in a single year 
from 145 in 1919-20, to 57 in 1920-21. In Wazi- 
ristan certain clans went so far in 1922 as to 
request the British authorities to construct a 
metalled road from Tochi to Razmak and to 
establish a permanent fort at the latter place, 
H 


98 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


provided that in place of a regular police force 
there was set up a body of Khassadars enlisted 
from amongst themselves. Foiling raiders for 
regular pay possesses attractions superior, evi- 
dently, to those attaching to raiding for uncertain 
reward ; and the fall in the number of raids in the 
Dera Ismael Khan district since the occupation 
of Waziristan is as remarkable as in the neighbour- 
hood of Peshawar. From 198 in 1919-20, they 
fell to 51 in 1921-22; the number of British 
subjects kidnapped from 127 to 17; and the 
property looted from Rs. 12,00,000 to Rs. 55,000. 

The construction of the Khyber railway will 
also do much to relieve the economic pressure on 
the tribesmen of the Afridi section of the frontier. 
It is a costly undertaking and will in all prob- 
ability run into a sum of two crores of rupees, or 
well over £50,000, for every one of its twenty-six 
miles. Here again the prospect of economic relief 
has overcome the natural hostility of the tribes- 
men to such incursions into their country; and 
competition for contracts in connection with its 
construction has been brisk. But the railway, 
unlike the Khassadars, will merely increase the 
natural pressure upon the civilised Power to 
advance. Its construction is in itself a big step 
forward—as is also the occupation of Waziristan, 
the avowed object of which is the construction of 
block-houses and roads. 

There will be strong forces pulling in the 
opposite direction—the financial stringency of 
the Government of India and the natural aversion 
of the increasing popular element in the Govern- 
ment of the country to accept responsibility for 
any policy that can be described as extravagant, 
imperialistic, or adventurous. But the pressure 
upon the civilised Power is fundamental and will 
remain while the forces operating in an opposite 
direction are susceptible of change. An impartial 


THE THIRD AFGHAN WAR 99 


examination of the financial aspect of the question 
tends to show even now, that in the long run a 
policy of peaceful penetration would probably 
prove far less costly than the policy of withdrawal 
punctuated by punitive expeditions, of which there 
have been more than sixty during the past three- 
quarters of a century. The whole aspect of the 
matter has been completely altered in recent 
times by two factors of paramount importance— 
the arming of the tribes with modern rifles and 
the knowledge of fire discipline and modern 
tactics which they have acquired. It is only 
necessary to compare the statistics of recent 
expeditions with those of earlier ones to realise 
how formidable an undertaking a punitive expedi- 
tion has now become. Up to the close of the nine- 
teenth century the actual cost of campaigns across 
the administrative frontier was not great. Ex- 
penditure under this head during the closing 
twenty years of the century amounted to ap- 
proximately £300,000, and this sum included the 
cost of the Chitral campaign of 1895, namely, 
£112,000, and that of the Tirah campaign of 1897, 
namely, £124,000.1 Compare with these figures 
the expenditure under the same head during the 
first twenty years of the present century, namely, 
£19,500,000, and the nature of the change becomes 
apparent. Still more significant is the sudden leap 
in cost during the past few years. The blockade 
of the Mahsuds during the years 1900-1902 
of which I have written, cost roughly £250,000 ; 
the operations against the tribes in 1915-16 alone 
cost little short of £300,000—almost exactly the 
cost of the whole of the expeditions across the 
border during the last twenty years of the nine- 
teenth century. It is from this year that the 


1 For these figures and those which follow, I am indebted to an 
interesting series of articles which appeared in the “ Englishman ” 
of Calcutta during the summer of 1922, over the initials J. A. S. 


100 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


cost ascends with such alarming steepness. In 
1916-17 we spent £475,000 under this head; in 
1917-18, £1,134,000; in 1918-19, only a little 
less, and in 1919-20, approximately £16,000,000. 
This last figure includes the cost of the third 
Afghan war. 

Such figures are sufficient in themselves to 
make it clear that the frontier campaign of to-day 
is a very serious military operation requiring very 
large numbers of troops and equipment of a very 
high standard. In the old days a force of a few 
thousand men sufficed—the first punitive expedi- 
tion against the Umarzai Wazirs in 1852 consisted 
of 1500 men; in 1919-20 it required a force of 
45,000 fighting men, or, with the necessary comple- 
ment of non-combatants, an army of 80,000 men in 
all, to deal adequately with Waziristan. It was at 
the beginning of these operations that the extent 
of the change which has taken place in the char- 
acter of frontier warfare was brought home with 
stunning effect. At the beginning of our advance 
from Jandola in December 1919 we met with a 
serious reverse, losing in two days 118 killed, in- 
cluding 5 British officers, and 200 wounded, with 
nothing to set against the loss. Thereafter hard 
fighting, during which the small gains had to be 
carefully consolidated and held by permanent 
pickets as they were made, marked a slow 
advance. On January the 14th, 1920, another 
fierce battle took place in a stony river bed over- 
looked by barren hills. Our casualties on this 
day amounted to 9 British officers killed and 6 
wounded, 2 Indian officers and 365 Indian other 
ranks killed and wounded. Not the wildest jingo 
amongst soldiers, hankering for martial glory, 
would choose a frontier campaign to-day for the 
satisfaction of his aspirations. A constant repeti- 
tion of punitive expeditions of this character > 
would become intolerable. Moreover, if the tribes 


THE THIRD AFGHAN WAR 101 


. once became convinced that penetration of the 
kind which has now begun results in an easing 
of their economic burden without any violent 
departure from the existing order, under which 
what passes for public affairs are handled in 
accordance with tribal custom, the process of 
introducing civilisation, and by degrees some form 
of administration, may be accomplished much 
more easily than has hitherto been thought 
possible. If the belief that oil exists in appreci- 
able quantity in tribal territory proves well 
founded, this will prove yet another incentive to 
a further step forward which may well be accepted 
by the tribes for the same reason that the Khyber 
railway has been accepted, namely, that it will 
pay. 

So much for the North-West Frontier. Be- 
cause of the determining influence which it has 
exercised upon India itself; because it still pro- 
vides the Government of India with one of its most 
constant and insistent problems, and because the 
general reader is not usually familiar with its 
story, have I devoted so much space to it. 
Before returning to the lands which it has served 
both as a rampart and a gateway, and to the 
peoples whose ancestors streamed century after 
century through its rugged portals, a brief refer- 
ence seems called for to the coming by another 
highway—that of the ocean—of the most recent 
of the incursions to which India has been subject 
—that of the peoples of the West. 


CHAPTER IX 
THE INCURSION OF THE WEST 


Ir was only in recent historical times, after the 
human reservoirs of Asia had ceased spilling over 
into the far-stretching plains of Hindustan, that 
the Indian seas were opened up to commerce and 
adventure on a large scale, and became a broad 
highway running from Europe to Asia. It was, 
in fact, on July the 8th, 1497, that the famous 
Portuguese mariner, Vasco da Gama, sailed from 
Lisbon on the adventurous voyage of discovery 
which carried him round the Cape of Good Hope 
and landed him at Calicut on May the 20th of the 
following year. And it was nigh upon a century 
later, in 1591, that the first commercial venture 
from England was embarked upon. Portugal, 
Holland, France, each in turn played a part in the 
spirited drama of merchant adventure between 
Kurope and India, which followed upon the voyage 
of Vascoda Gama. But it was Great Britain that 
was destined to prevail against all rivals, and if 
the rounding of the Cape in 1497 is to be regarded 
as the opening of a momentous chapter in human 
history, the incorporation of the “ London East 
India Company ”’ by Queen Elizabeth on Decem- 
ber the 31st, 1600, under the title of ‘‘ The 
Governour and Company of Merchants of London 
trading into the East Indies,’’ must equally be 
regarded as its most pregnant episode. It was by 
the amalgamation of this Company with another 
102 


THE INCURSION OF THE WEST 1038 


trading corporation which received its charter 
from William III. in 1698, that the ‘‘ United Com- 
pany of Merchants of England trading to the 
Kast Indies,” more generally known as ‘the 
Honourable East India Company,”’ came into 
existence in 1708. 

In 1746 began the state of war between Great 
Britain and France in India, from which the 
former eventually emerged as the paramount 
power in Asia. And it was in 1765, after a series 
of hard-fought battles, waged sometimes against 
the French and sometimes against the armies of 
India over a number of years, that the Company, 
under the imperious guidance of Lord Clive, be- 
came the receivers of the revenue of Bengal, 
Bihar, and Orissa, and thus acquired for Great 
Britain the virtual sovereignty of these countries. 
Amongst the battlefields of this period whose 
names have deservedly become historic are 
Plassey, where in 1757 Clive broke the power of 
Muhammadan rule in Bengal; Wandewash, where 
in 1760 Sir Eyre Coote defeated the French under 
the hitherto victorious Lally, and Buxar where in 
1764 Sir Hector Monro destroyed the army of the 
King of Oude. 

The times were ripe for the advent of a strong 
power capable of piecing together the fragments 
into which the splendid edifice raised up by the 
Moghul dynasty had fallen. Cracks had already 
made their appearance in it during the reign of 
Aurungzeb, who dethroned his father, Shah 
Jehan, and waded to the throne through the blood 
of his murdered brothers in 1658. For during the 
third quarter of the seventeenth century there had 
arisen a new and formidable confederacy, that of 
the Mahrattas, under their national hero Sivaji, 
which challenged the hegemony of the Muham- 
madan kings. In 1723 the Nizam of the Deccan 
acquired independence. In 1739 Northern India 


104 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


was scourged by Nadir Shah, who swooped down 
upon Delhi from Persia, massacring there 150,000 
people and carrying away treasure of an estimated 
value of 125,000,000 sterling. And with the death 
of Muhammad Shah in 1748, the empire of the 
Moghuls lost all cohesion, and broke up finally 
into a number of scattered principalities. 

It is not history that I am writing, and it is 
no part of my purpose to attempt anything in the 
nature of a narrative of the dramatic series of 
events which culminated in the overlordship of 
India falling to Great Britain. A description of 
a single episode must be taken as typical of the 
manner in which the foundations of British India 
were laid; and I have little hesitation in taking 
the Battle of Plassey as my example. 


* * * of ** 


In August the sacred Bhagirathi rolls with rich 
voluptuousness across the fertile plains of the 
Bengal delta. On either side it is fringed with 
continuous stretches of standing crops of vivid 
ereen, broken here and there by collections of 
dust-brown houses, clustering amid thick clumps 
of shady trees. Chocolate figures, clothed only in 
exiguous loin-cloths and huge circular hats of 
plaited bamboo, are to be seen dotted among the 
crops, giving a touch of life to a scene otherwise 
characterised chiefly by a languorous repose. The 
fierce heat of the sun is tempered only by inter- 
mittent storm-clouds fitfully spitting forth rain, 
as they pass on their journey northwards to the 
mountain walls beyond the plains. 

On such an August day I had been floating 
down the current on a river-flat through the his- 
toric plains of Murshidabad, occupied with such 
thoughts as the proximity of Plassey inevitably 
conjured up. In 1917 the war which was shaking 
civilisation to its foundations was never long 


‘VSSIYO NI UVMSANVENHA LV SHIAKYYL AO dNOa) VW 


‘8 #U1d 





»* 


Troms LYRA i 


t <4 Oe 





THE INCURSION OF THE WEST 105 


absent from one’s thoughts, and it was with a 
mind prepared to draw comparisons that I stepped 
ashore on the left bank of the river in the com- 
parative cool of early morning. The famous field 
of Plassey, whereon between 8 A.M. and 5 P.M., on 
a burning day in June just one hundred and sixty 
years before, issues of such vast import had been 
decided by the military genius of Clive, presented 
an appearance of extreme peace. The rolling 
crops which covered the ground in all directions 
spoke of the peaceful and uneventful pursuit of 
husbandry, rather than of the stir and clash of 
great events. They also did much to screen from 
view such features of the land as might assist in 
the reconstruction, in a mental picture, of the 
scenes of a hundred and sixty years ago. Fortu- 
nately this difficulty had been provided against, 
and from the backs of elephants thoughtfully sup- 
plied, we obtained a view of much which would 
otherwise have remained hidden from our gaze. 
With the stupendous panorama of the Euro- 
pean conflict ever before one’s eyes and _ its 
monstrous din ever ringing in one’s ears, the 
thought uppermost in one’s mind was the absurd 
insufficiency alike of stage and dramatis personae 
for the enactment of such momentous events. 
Small pillars marked the positions of the opposing 
forces, so that the strategical plan lay open to 
one’s gaze. Taking a stand midway between the 
positions first occupied by the opposing armies, 
we could see, little more than a stone’s throw to 
the east of the battle, the spot whence Mir Jaffer 
and his troops, drawn up on the left of the semi- 
circular line occupied by the army of the Nawab, 
played the part of interested spectators. The 
danger of envelopment which they threatened, 
posted as they were at so short a distance on the 
right flank of Clive’s meagre line, was plainly 
apparent ; and it is difficult to estimate the effect 


106 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


of the inactivity which they displayed upon the 
course of history. 

Apart from the restricted area over which the 
battle was fought, nothing pointed so forcibly to 
the futility of the mechanism of war then as con- 
trasted with the terrible efficacy of its machinery 
now, as the unpretentious little pillars from which 
we learned that the artillery took up positions in 
front rather than in rear of the companies of in- 
fantry. With the appliances of war playing only 
a minor part, one imagined that numbers must 
have possessed a proportionately greater value, 
and, standing on the actual ground on which the 
battle was waged, it was easy enough to picture 
the feelings of uncertainty with which Clive and 
his little band of officers must have been assailed. 
Facing him and his small force of 3200 European 
and Indian troops, at a distance of a few hundred 
yards only, was the notorious Surajah Dowla 
with a vast concourse of horse, foot, and elephants, 
numbering in all over 50,000 souls. 

The success of the desperate enterprise which 
lay before him depended on the outcome of the 
intrigues for the overthrow of Surajah Dowla 
which had been in progress for some time before. 
A secret treaty had been negotiated between the 
representatives of the East India Company and 
Mir Jaffer, general in the service of the Nawab, 
based on the assumption that Surajah Dowla 
would be deposed and Mir Jaffer set up as Nawab 
in his place. Could the latter be relied upon to 
play the part assigned to him? There was every 
reason to suppose that the enterprise would meet 
with a large measure of public support for 
Surajah Dowla, ‘‘ whose character of ferocity and 
thoughtlessness,”’ in the words of a contemporary 
Indian writer, Ghulam Husain Khan,! kept his 


1 Quoted by Sir George Forrest, C.I.E., in his ‘‘ Life of Lord Clive,”’ 
a volume to which I am indebted for the main facts upon which this 
brief account of the Battle of Plassey is based. 


THE INCURSION OF THE WEST 107 


Muhammadan chiefs and the principal citizens of 
Murshidabad ‘“‘in continual alarms, and whose 
~ fickleness of temper made them tremble,’ was 
himself the real, if unwitting author of the con- 
spiracy for his own overthrow. The plot was, in 
fact, not of Clive’s making; he merely took ad- 
vantage of the situation which Surajah Dowla 
himself had created. Moreover, elaborate pre- 
cautions had been taken to ensure constancy on 
Mir Jaffer’s part. Mr. Watts, the Company’s 
agent at Murshidabad, had outwitted Surajah 
Dowla’s spies, and gained admission to Mir 
Jaffer’s house in a closed palanquin such as was 
used by Muhammadan women. Thus hidden, he 
had been carried into one of the apartments in the 
seraglio, where he had been received by Mir Jaffer 
and his son, Miran. The former had given his 
full assent to the terms of the treaty, and with a 
volume of the Koran on his own head and his 
hand on the head of his son, had sworn with 
great solemnity that he would faithfully perform 
all that he had promised.} 

Nevertheless Clive had doubts. He had ex- 
pected daily letters from Mir Jaffer, keeping him 
informed of events at Murshidabad, and Mir Jaffer 
had maintained a disconcerting silence. From 
other sources he had received information that 
the plot had been discovered and that Mir Jaffer 
and Surajah Dowla had come toterms. On June 
the 19th he had expressed his fears in a letter to 
the Company at Calcutta, in which he said that 
he felt the greatest anxiety at Mir Jaffer’s silence, 
and that he feared even if he was not treacherous, 
that his vacillation would ruin the enterprise. 
On the following evening he had received a letter 
from Mir Jaffer sewn up in a slipper, the language 
of which was so ambiguous as only to increase his 
apprehensions. Two days of intense anxiety had 

1 * The Life of Lord Clive,”’ vol. i. p. 433. 


108 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


followed, and it had not been until 3 p.m. on June 
the 22nd that he had received a message from Mir 
Jaffer which had seemed to him to be sufficiently 
encouraging to justify an advance. He had 
crossed the river at five in the afternoon, and 
marching on through a downpour of rain, had 
reached a wood near Plassey at midnight. 
Neither the mango grove known as the Laksha 
Bagh or orchard of one hundred thousand trees, 
nor the adjacent brick building—a shooting lodge 
of the Nawab—which Clive occupied and used as 
his headquarters, are to be seen to-day. But from 
the back of an elephant and with the aid of the 
memorial pillars, one experiences little difficulty 
in picking out the salient features of the battle- 
sround. Sir George Forrest has brought together 
the accounts of a number of those who actually 
took part in the events of the day, from which a 
vivid picture of the battle is obtained. Marching 
out of their entrenchments on the morning of the 
23rd, the vast concourse of the Nawab’s following 
formed up in a semicircle facing and enveloping 
the right of the position which Clive had occupied ; 
“and what with the number of elephants all 
covered with scarlet cloth and embroidery, their 
horse with their drawn swords glittering in the 
sun, their heavy cannon drawn by vast trains of 
oxen, and their standards flying, they made a 
most pompous and formidable appearance.” ! A 
portion of his artillery was drawn up 200 yards 
only from the British, and it was a ball from one 
of these which “ bounding along and carrying off 
the arm of one of the King’s grenadiers,’”’ opened 
the battle at 8 a.m.? An artillery duel at short 
range continued until the afternoon, when the 
Nawab’s troops, with the exception of a large 


1 Account by Scrafton quoted by Sir George Forrest. 
2 * A Narrative of the Battle near Muxidavad,’’ dated ‘‘ Cossim- 
bazar, 29th June, 1757,”’ quoted by Sir George Forrest. 


THE INCURSION OF THE WEST 109 


corps on the extreme left of the line, moved slowly 
back to their entrenchments. This latter body 
was seen to be moving in such a manner as to 
cause doubt whether its aim was to gain possession 
of the village of Plassey in the rear of the British 
position, or whether it was desirous of coming 
over to join forces with Clive. It was not then 
known that this was Mir Jaffer’s corps and it was 
kept at a distance by the British guns. 

Subsequent events were described by Clive in 
a note despatched to Calcutta the same evening, 
which, if somewhat lacking in descriptive detail, 
at least had the merit of being explicit. ‘“‘ About 
noon,” he wrote, “* the Nabob’s army returned to 
a very strong camp in sight, upon which we 
advanced and stormed the Nabob’s camp which 
we have taken with all his cannon and pursued 
him six miles. . . . Meer Jaffeir, Roydoolub, and 
Luttee Cawn gave us no other assistance than 
standing neuter.” 

This last statement is scarcely calculated to 
give an accurate impression of what actually took 
place. When Surajah Dowla first learned of the 
approach of the English, he realised the danger 
that he was in from Mir Jaffer’s disaffection and 
made a supreme endeavour to win back his allegi- 
ance. “ Taking out the cotton of recklessness 
from his ear,’’ we are told by the author of the 
‘** Riyazu-s-salatin,”’ a Muhammadan historian who 
completed his history in 1788, and who was 
writing, consequently, of events only thirty years 
after their actual occurrence, “he displayed 
towards the aforesaid Khan flattery and endear- 
ment, and sending the Begam of Mahabat Jang 
to Mir Jaffer, opened the gates of apology for 
his past shortcomings.” Mir Jaffer remained 
silent, and two days before the Battle of Plassey 
Mir Madan, the Superintendent of the Nawab’s 
artillery, assured his master that it was at Mir 


110 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Jaffer’s instigation that the English were coming, 
and urged him to kill him. The historian records 
in picturesque language the Nawab’s omission to 
act upon this advice. “In that the arrow of 
Fate cannot be parried by the shield of Effort, 
and in that God’s decree had already been passed 
another way— 


To the advice of that wise sage 
That light-hearted man was deaf,”’ 


Surajah Dowla made a final effort to win back Mir 
Jaffer after the Battle of Plassey had actually 
begun. Sending for him in the midst of the 
battle when the issue was still in doubt, he 
appealed to him on the strength of consanguinity 
and the past friendship of their families. Mir 
Jaffer advised him to recall his troops from the 
attack since the day was drawing to a close, and 
added that he would then arrange for an engage- 
ment on the morrow. Surajah Dowla, dissatisfied 
with this reply, appealed to Rai Dulab, another 
of his chiefs, from whom he received the same 
traitorous advice. And it was the demoralising 
uncertainty created by the orders issued on the 
strength of this advice, that enabled Clive with 
his small but gallant and aggressive force, to 
drive home his impetuous attack. 

From Plassey the scene shifted to Murshidabad, 
thirty miles to the north, which was entered by 
Clive on June the 29th, and which, a few days 
later, saw the assassination of Surajah Dowla by 
one Muhammad Beg at the instigation of Mir 
Jaffer’s son, and the elevation of Mir Jaffer 
himself to the Musnud of Murshidabad. 


f * * * % 


The epitaph of Muhammadan rule in Bengal 
is written in staring letters over the -city of 
Murshidabad. On all sides of one are signs of 
decay. The jungle has eaten into the heart of 


THE INCURSION OF THE WEST 111 


the city ; its buildings, where not in actual ruin, 
are frequently crumbling. Even the river—the 


~ sacred Bhagirathi—once the main channel of the 


Ganges and a great and famous trade route, 
dwindled seriously in volume when the main 
stream above Murshidabad forced its way east- 
wards to form what is now known as the Padma 
river. And the reduced stream itself left its own 
bed a century ago, pushing its way west of its 
former channel, which can now be traced by a 
series of miasmic swamps, notable among them 
the Motijheel, the haunts of the malaria-bearing 
mosquito. The result is to be seen in the enlarged 
spleens of the children, in the falling birth-rate, 
and in the pallor and general inertia of the people. 

Clive’s description of the city in 1759, two 
years after the Battle of Plassey, is almost start- 
Img in its unexpectedness. The picture he paints 
is that of a vast metropolis “as extensive, 
populous and rich as the city of London,” with 
palaces immeasurably greater than the palaces of 
Kurope; and Mr. P. C. Mazumdar, who has 
written an excellent synopsis of the history of 
Murshidabad since its rise to fame under a great 
Dewan of Bengal, Murshed Kuli Khan, at the 
beginning of the eighteenth century, gives a glow- 
ing account of its former greatness. Its popula- 
tion then ran into hundreds of thousands ; to-day 
it has shrunk to a few thousands only. The mint 
duties levied at the rate of 2 per cent on the 
bullion coined amounted, he tells us, to over three 
lakhs of rupees; and the municipal taxes and 
duties on trade brought in an even larger sum. 
Compared with this revenue of more than six 
lakhs of rupees a year, the municipal income 
to-day comes to a paltry total of a few thousand 
rupees; and I was informed by the municipal 
commissioners on the occasion of my last visit to 
the town in 1921, that unless financial assistance 


112 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


could be rendered to them by the Provincial 
Government, this once great city was doomed, in 
view of “ the ever-decreasing taxable capacity of 
the rapidly decaying population,” to fall into a 
state of chronic and penurious insignificance. 
Clive had declared that there were individuals in 
the Murshidabad of his day “ possessing in- 
finitely greater property ” than any individual in 
London; and in his statement before the House 
of Commons he made mention of *‘ Hindu million- 
aires and other men of property.” In 1921 the 
Municipal Commissioners complained to me that 
the mere repairing of the roads, few though they 
now are—for the remnant of the city covers a 
site of a mere half-dozen miles in circumference 
—had become a burden which, without financial 
assistance, they were no longer able to bear. 
Mr. Mazumdar has given an even more graphic 
example of the way in which the glory has 
departed from this erstwhile capital of a great 
satrapy. “From the pinnacles of the turrets of 
seven hundred mosques, the voices of seven 
hundred shouters of the azan simultaneously rent 
the atmosphere of the crowded city.’’ Thus was 
it in the eighteenth century. At the dawn of 
the twentieth century hardly seventy places of 
worship remained, and of these seventy hardly 
seven were in proper repair. 

The most imposing building in the Murshidabad 
of the present day is the palace of the present 
Nawab, the foundation stone of which was laid by 
the Nawab Nazim Hamayun Jah—Shuja-ul-Mulk, 
hero of the country; Ihtishamuddowla, digni- 
fier of the State; Hamayan Jah, of auspicious 
rank; Feroze Jang, victor in war—in 1829. A 
huge pile of buildings in the Italian style, it 
stands on the left bank of the present channel 
of the Bhagirathi, and contains among other 

1 “The Musnud of Murshidabad,” by P. C. Mazumdar. 


THE INCURSION OF THE WEST 113 


things of historic interest, a splendid armoury 
_ with a fine collection of weapons, largely of the 
sixteenth century; picture galleries containing 
examples of the work of Dutch, Flemish, French, 
and Italian artists; a record room in which 
are stored documents of considerable historical 
interest; a library of many volumes, and a 
treasure house, the repository of a valuable collec- 
tion of famous jewels. But the present Nawab 
finds it impossible on account of the unhealthiness 
of the place to spend much time at Murshidabad, 
and even the palace is beginning to take on the 
dead and silent atmosphere which broods over 
buildings no longer tenanted. 

And not far from this, the most prominent 
symbol of past greatness, is to be seen the most 
striking example of present decay, in the artillery 
park of the Nawabs. The site is now a jungle- 
covered wilderness, in which a solitary cannon is 
all that is left of a great armoury bristling with 
the guns of a powerful line of Oriental rulers. 
The gun itself is of considerable interest, having 
been made in Dacca in the year 16387 and 
christened Jahan Kosha or “ Destroyer of the 
World.” It was probably brought to its present 
site by Murshed Kuli Khan when he raised up 
the city of Murshidabad upon the site of an older 
town called Makhsusabad. And with the city 
he founded also the line of the Nawabs which 
Clive encountered and defeated on the field of 
Plassey in the person of Surajah Dowla, and whose 
representative to-day is the senior nobleman of 
Bengal. For after having been given the title of 
Motamul-ul Mulk, Alanddowla, Noser Jang, Noseri 
—Guardian of the Country, Promoter of the 
State, Helper in War, the Defender—and ap- 
pointed Subadar of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, by 
the Emperor Aurungzeb, he obtained patents 
from the Emperor Farrukh-Sir confirming him 

I 


114 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


in his occupation of the two offices of Nizamat 
and Dewani which he had succeeded in combining 
in his own person; an unwise departure, as the 
translator of the ‘“‘ Riyazu-s-salatin ’’? has pointed 
out, from the old Moghul policy of keeping the two 
offices distinct, in that it led to intrigues against 
the central authority at Delhi. What attracts the 
attention of the visitor, however, is not so much 
the gun itself as its strange position. For this 
huge cannon, 174 feet in length and 5 feet in 
circumference, weighing 74 tons, hangs suspended 
horizontally some feet above the ground, em- 
bedded in the trunk of a pipal tree which has 
wrapped itself about it and now holds it aloft in 
an iron grip. No spectacle could better bring 
home to one the fate of Murshidabad as the grave- 
yard of vanished greatness than this amazing 
example of the assertiveness of the Bengal jungle. 


CHAPTER X 
THE IMPRINT OF GREAT BRITAIN 


THE results of the commercial adventures of the 
sixteenth and following centuries, culminating in 
the acquisition of India by Great Britain, which 
have been touched on in the last chapter, are not 
easy to assess. Two results, indeed, of great 
magnitude will be discerned by the traveller who 
takes the trouble to reflect upon the matter, 
namely, the existence throughout the continent 
of an administrative system of a Western type 
and the introduction into a country essentially 
agricultural of the industrialism of Europe. A 
further result, namely, that arising out of the 
impact between two civilisations of distinct types, 
is far less easy to compute. What the ultimate 
outcome of this impact will be is of incalculable 
importance to mankind. Its study is of absorb- 
ing interest and is too large a subject to be under- 
taken here. It must be reserved for a separate 
volume. Consideration of the first two, however, 
falls properly into these pages. 

There is often a disposition amongst visitors 
to India to take these things too much for granted. 
We are so used to thinking of India as a British 
Dependency that the real nature of our achieve- 
ment fails to impress itself upon us. Here 
familiarity breeds not contempt but loss of per- 
spective. We travel from one end of India to 
the other, passing through all the gradations of 

115 


r 


116 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


climate, landscape, and race that the continent 
contains, as comfortably and as securely as we do 
in Great Britain, and we find in this nothing to 
excite surprise. Everywhere there is a smooth 
uniformity so far as the mechanism of travel is 
concerned, and it never occurs to us that it might 
well be otherwise. The scenes through which we 
pass are rich in contrast. The differences between 
the peoples amongst whom we travel are obvious 
and striking; their customs are varied, their 
languages bewildering. We immediately recog- 
nise them as separate and distinct by their mere 
outward appearance. No one could possibly 
mistake a Sikh from the Punjab for a Tamil of 
Madras, or a man of Baluchistan for an inhabitant 
of Burma. Yet it does not strike us as strange 
that, in the influences which determine the attitude 
of all these peoples in the matter of the social 
economy of the continent, there should be a quite 
palpable uniformity. We are, perhaps, vaguely 
conscious that uniformity exists, in other words 
that the order which we find in one part of India 
is the same in kind as the order which we find 
in any other part; but we rest content with 
the fact and do not trouble ourselves as to its 
cause. 

If we were sufficiently interested we should 
find little difficulty in putting the matter to the 
test. We might take, for example, for the 
purpose of our investigation the most ubiquitous 
agency with which the public comes in contact, 
namely, the police. We should find that in 
physiognomy and dress the policeman of Madras 
differed widely from the policeman of the United 
Province or Bombay; but that in the discharge 
of their respective duties they were inspired quite 
obviously by a common code. Further observa- 
tion would go to show that all the wheels of the 
complicated machine which regulates the public 


THE IMPRINT OF GREAT BRITAIN 117 


life of the continent revolve in rhythm and are 
subject to some common control. 

There is nothing like travel in Asiatic lands 
which are beyond the reach of British rule for 
bringing home to the Englishman the immense 
advantages which he enjoys in India, such as 
employment of the English language as _ the 
lingua franca of the continent, and the working 
of all such institutions as railways in accordance 
with English custom and tradition. It is not 
until he has. had personal experience of all the 
difficulties and inconveniences of travel elsewhere, 
that all those small things which smooth the path 
of his progress in India assume their true signi- 
ficance, and that he begins to realise that it is 
due to something more than chance that he 
finds himself so much at home amid surroundings 
so diversified in themselves and differing so widely 
from those which prevail in his own land. When 
he has thus ceased taking things for granted and 
has begun to think, he will find a good deal in 
the circumstances of British India to excite 
astonishment. 

What we actually exercise control over is, as 
has already been pointed out, a continent the size 
of all Europe, excluding only Russia, with a 
population of 820 million people. Rather less 
than two-fifths of this area, and rather less than 
one-fourth of the total population, is administered 
and governed under British suzerainty by the 
rulers of 700 different Native States; the remainder 
is administered directly by us. And the whole of 
the vast machinery necessary for this stupendous 
task is directed, controlled, and kept in motion 
by a body of officials of all kinds—civilians, 
judges, engineers, doctors, educationalists, forest 
officers, and so on, of whom the number of English- 
men has at all times been less than 5000, and is 
likely in the near future still further to diminish. 


118 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


In the United Provinces a single civilian was 
until quite recently responsible for the good 
government of a country larger than New Zealand 
with a population of 47 million souls. In Burma 
another civilian exercises supreme authority over 
a country twice the size of the British Isles. 

The achievement is all the more remarkable 
when it is remembered what it is that is done 
through the agency of the public services. India 
is a huge going concern run by the State. The 
State does not merely carry on the work of 
government and the administration of justice ; 
it does many other things besides. It constructs 
and runs railways; it undertakes huge irrigation 
works; it organises famine relief; it fights pesti- 
lence and plague ; it doctors and it sanitates ; it 
undertakes the exploitation and scientific treat- 
ment of the immense forests scattered broadcast 
over the land; it monopolises the manufacture 
of salt; it runs schools and colleges; it makes 
its influence felt, in other words, in every depart- 
ment of the people’s life. 

So long as one is travelling on beaten tracks 
—along the railways and from town to town— 
one scarcely notices the working of the adminis- 
trative machine. One meets officials, but they 
carry on their business in offices very much as 
officials do elsewhere ; and one does not find it 
necessary to invoke their aid to enable one to 
pursue one’s programme of business or of pleasure. 
The influence of the government is there but it 
is latent. It is only when one leaves the railways 
and towns behind one that one discovers how 
far-reaching is the arm of authority and how 
important is the part played by personality in 
the personnel that is responsible for the working 
of the system. When one travels for mile after 
mile over some of the less densely populated 
tracts of Northern or Central India, passing in 


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THE IMPRINT OF GREAT BRITAIN 119 


the course of a few hours from one epoch of 
civilisation to another, from a land of large and 
prosperous villages and of intense cultivation to 
less trodden areas not yet won from the dominion 
of the jungle, where man is represented by 
primitive aboriginal tribes, the works of man by 
simple collections of wattle huts, and the fears 
and hopes of man—wherewith are circumscribed 
the sum total of his spiritual and intellectual 
aspirations—by crude graven images of wood and 
stone; then one begins to realise something of 
the extent and character of British rule. 

One’s first inclination is to suppose that these 
more primitive parts of India must lie beyond the 
fine-spun network of administration ; but if one 
is fortunate enough to accompany the district 
officer on one of his cold-weather tours through 
such a region, one finds that this early assumption 
needs revision. When one has seen these denizens 
of the jungle gathered round his camp, laying 
their affairs before him, requesting this for their 
welfare and that for the righting of some wrong, 
pleading (with the faith that removes mountains 
in its efficacy) for medicine for all their ills, one 
realises that, very far from their being beyond the 
scope of British rule, they find in the representa- 
tive of British rule something altogether tran- 
scending the idea suggested by the word “‘ official,” 
and approximating far more nearly to some benign 
Providence in the flesh. 

There was only one way in which the vast and 
varied continent of India could be brought in its 
entirety within the embrace of the administration, 
and that way was, in the words of the official 
documents, by “‘ the repeated subdivision of terri- 
tory, each administrative area being in the re- 
sponsible charge of an officer who is subordinate 
to the officer next in rank above him.” In the 
administrative vocabulary, the word “ district ”’ 


120 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


has a technical meaning. It is the most import- 
ant administrative unit, the districts into which 
the different provinces are divided forming the 
base of a pyramid, as it were, of which the Pro- 
vincial Government is the apex. This is merely a 
paraphrase of the official text which informs us 
that ‘“‘a Province may be regarded as a collec- 
tion of districts,” though the added information 
is here given that the district “is usually split 
up into subdivisions, and these again into smaller 
circles.” 

I have already called attention to the limita- 
tions of statistics ; yet it is difficult to draw things 
in India in true perspective without calling in 
their aid. Thus it helps towards a correct idea of 
what is meant by a “ district,”’ in terms of super- 
ficial area, to be told that there are in British India 
267 districts with an average area of 4000 square 
miles (the average size of an English county is 
1000 square miles) and an average population of 
over 900,000. The extremes, as is only to be 
expected when dealing with a continent the size 
of India, have a wide variation from the average. 
The district of Vizagapatam, in Madras, for in- 
stance, has an area of 17,223 square miles, or, to 
compare it with the corresponding unit in Great 
Britain, is nearly three times the size of Yorkshire, 
and has a population of over 3,000,000. In 
Burma the Upper Chindwin district is five times 
the size of the average district, but has a popula- 
tion of only 170,000; while the Mymensingh dis- 
trict in Eastern Bengal, which is only half as large 
again as the average district, has a population of 
more than 4,500,000. 

The district officer, who is known as the 
collector’? in some provinces and as_ the 
‘* deputy-commissioner ”’ in others, is the principal 
revenue Official and the chief magistrate. The 
functions which he has to discharge in these two 


THE IMPRINT OF GREAT BRITAIN 121 


capacities are sufficiently onerous; but he has in 
addition a great many other miscellaneous duties. 


~ After casually observing that ‘ he has to interest 


himself in all matters affecting the well-being of 
the people,” an official document feels it neces- 
sary to add that “for the proper discharge of 
his many duties, the collector-magistrate must 
be accessible to, and intimately acquainted with, 
the inhabitants of his district.’? The collector 
of Mymensingh would probably think this an 
excellent joke. 

I once had occasion to visit the collector of a 
large district during the camping season, and I 
learned by personal experience the meaning of the 
statistics dealing with superficial area. According 
to the official return, the size of the district was 
rather more than 5000 square miles. The Royal 
Commission on the Public Services, of which I was 
a member, was carrying on its rather laborious 
inquiries in Calcutta, and a long week-end was all 
the time that I could spare. My host’s note of 
invitation was cordial, and his instructions for 
the journey concise and commonplace. I was to 
leave by the 5 P.M. train, which was due at 9 P.M. 
He would send to meet me at the station. I com- 
plied. At 9 p.m. I alighted on the platform of a 
small wayside station and looked round for the 
promised conveyance. Nothing answering to my 
expectations was to be seen—nothing, in fact, was 
to be seen at all, except a small group of dusky 
figures squatting outside the station, dimly visible 
in the flickering light of the station lamp. As I 
was debating what to do next, one of the group 
arose and came towards me. Was I not the sahib 
who was going to the Collector Sahib’s camp? I 
was; then, if it pleased me, we would start. 
Whereupon I was conducted towards the group, 
whom I found on closer acquaintance were 
gathered round an object about the shape and 


122 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


size of a large coffin, with poles projecting at each 
end. Here was my conveyance. I put in my 
blankets, clambered in, and was hoist on to the 
shoulders of two or three stalwart bearers. I was 
well enough accustomed to the sedan-chair of 
China. But the chair of that country has a seat, 
and my present conveyance had not; and the 
hard, unyielding plank floor upon which I lay 
seemed to me to be attended with disadvantages 
over and above those which are in any case suffi- 
ciently in evidence even in the seated type. I 
consoled myself with the reflection that the 
distance to be covered would probably not be 
great, and I inquired how soon we might expect 
to reach camp. “ By daylight,” was the laconic 
reply. “ But how far is it?” I asked incredu- 
lously. ‘‘ Twenty-four miles,” I was told. We 
did arrive at 6 A.M., and on consideration I felt 
bound to admit that this was not bad going in the 
dark, over rough tracks and across unbridged 
rivers, through a wild and jungle-covered land. 
It is casual experiences of this kind that help 
one towards an understanding of what is meant by 
British rule in India, and in particular of the task 
of the district official who, to quote the official 
document once more, is expected to be “ access- 
ible to and intimately acquainted with the in- 
habitants of his district.”” Travel in these rural 
areas also discloses other features of the adminis- 
tration for which we are responsible, namely, the 
system of local self-government, which one finds 
at work side by side with the district administra- 
tion. Investigation goes to show that in theory, 
at any rate, the system corresponds closely to 
that which has been evolved in the West, and it 
is with no small interest that one inquires how a 
system, which is essentially a product of the 
democratic West, fits the circumstances of the 
immemorial East. The inquiry is well worth 


THE IMPRINT OF GREAT BRITAIN 123 


making, and in the course of it one finds oneself 
_ being presented with a more spacious and more 

detailed picture of rural India than, from the 
actual nature of the subject-matter, one would 
expect. 


CHAPTER XI 
LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 


By an act of the legislature passed in 1850, 
municipal boards were conferred upon a large 
number of towns all over India; and the powers 
and responsibilities thus bestowed upon them were 
extended by further legislation in the eighties of 
last century. The inauguration and gradual ex- 
tension of local self-government in rural areas 
followed somewhat behind the parallel effort in 
the case of the towns. There are now about 730 
municipalities in British India and 200 district 
boards, corresponding roughly to county councils 
in Great Britain. Subordinate to the district 
boards are some 550 subdivisional boards, known 
usually as local boards, 7.e. bodies exercising 
jurisdiction, under the general supervision of the 
district boards, over the administrative sub- 
divisions of the district. By the establishment of 
these bodies we sought to familiarise the vast and 
varied population of India with those shibboleths 
of the enlightened constitutionalism of the West— 
‘“‘ the elective principle ” and “‘ popular control.” 

In opening the new London County Council 
Hall on July the 17th, 1922, His Majesty King 
George declared that opinions differed as to the 
machinery of local administration and the best 
methods of obtaining the best results, but added : 
‘“‘ It is universally recognised that the root of all 
good government is a live and active civic spirit.”’ 

124 


LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 125 


If we may accept the conclusions of foreign ob- 
. servers, we may congratulate ourselves upon 
possessing this spirit in a special degree. One 
such observer has written with enthusiasm of the 
way in which in Great Britain “the country 
towns, boroughs, and districts and parishes, and 
all the machinery of their government are entirely 
managed by the voluntary labours of those with 
wealth, leisure, and ability to do so.” He has 
asserted that “no country in the world receives 
so much and such valuable service from its 
leisured classes,’’? and finally, that the fact that 
these classes ‘‘ undertake all these duties, that 
they do them so well, and with so little—almost 
no—friction, and with so little dissatisfaction to 
those whom they thus govern, is the most im- 
pressive feature of English life.’’ + 

There is no reason to suppose that the peoples 
of India do not likewise possess in generous 
measure these civic virtues. Indeed, if we accept 
the conclusions of Dr. Radhakumud Mookerji, 
not long since made public in an interesting 
volume,’ they possessed in ancient times a system 
of local self-government predicating capacity for 
corporate action in a high degree. But. the 
system of communal activity prevalent in ancient 
India differed in kind from that evolved by the 
democracy of Great Britain; and it was at least 
conceivable, therefore, that the latter might not 
be the one best suited to the soil of India. There 
is, however, much truth in the comment of 
another observer of the English and their ways 
to the effect that they have an immense and in- 
eradicable admiration for their own institutions. 
The Englishman, as he put it, “sticks to his 
traditions and usages, and, so help him God! 


1 ** Hngland and the English,” by Price Collier. 
2 ** Local Government in Ancient India,’ by Radhakumud Mookerji, 
M.A., Ph.D. 


126 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


he will force his island by-laws down the throat 
of great countries like India, China, Canada, 
Australia . . .,’’1 and it must be admitted that 
in deciding upon the type of local government to 
be established in India the authorities of the day 
went a long way towards justifying this somewhat 
caustic accusation. In Great Britain the people 
elected representatives to manage the affairs of 
the borough or the county, and in India, therefore, 
the inhabitants of the towns should likewise 
elect representatives to construct, maintain, and 
light their streets, provide and maintain their 
municipal buildings, arrange for conservancy, 
look after the public health and make provision 
for elementary education ; while the rural popula- 
tion should have roads, markets, rest-houses, 
pounds, ferries, and dispensaries constructed and 
maintained; a veterinary staff provided, and 
sanitation, vaccination, and education arranged 
for by a body corresponding as closely as circum- 
stances would permit to an English county council. 

The result was not altogether happy, and a 
people with a less robust belief in the excellence 
of their own institutions might, indeed, have 
found cause for discouragement at the manner 
in which, in the useful if somewhat unambitious 
sphere of municipal administration at any rate, 
the great principle of “ government by the people 
for the people ” was given application. To begin 
with, whatever may have been the reason, the 
elective principle did not excite in India the 
enthusiasm which was hoped for it. Instances 
of its failure were constantly being brought to 
my notice during my residence in Bengal. In 
one ward in a municipality in that Presidency, in 
which no less than twelve candidates stood for 
two vacancies, only thirty-seven voters went to 
the poll. In another contested election ten votes 

1 R. W. Emerson. 


LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 127 


only were recorded by an electorate of 259 persons. 
_ In a ward-election in an important town, seven 
out of eight candidates withdrew at the polling 
booth because the other was a man of low caste 
with whom they declined to compete. In another 
case the nominated members of a board objected 
to sitting with elected members on the ground 
that the latter might be persons who, according 
to the social customs of the country, should stand 
in their presence. An Indian-owned newspaper 
complained on the eve of the elections in one of 
the largest and most important towns in Bengal 
that a first offer of Rs. 1200 had been made for the 
seventy-nine votes in a particular locality in the 
city, that the votes in question had actually been 
secured by a cash payment of Rs. 1800, and that 
in another area an offer of Rs. 10 per vote was 
being made. 

Official reports of the working of the system 
in quite recent times are strewn with examples 
of a similar kind. A report from the United 
Provinces, while noting a growing interest in 
elections, struck a somewhat ominous note by 
adding that this “ was not always attributable 
to an intelligent concern for the welfare of the 
locality.” From the Punjab came an intimation 
that while a keen interest in elections was evinced 
in some municipalities, in others “ apathy was the 
rule,” and “‘ nomination was more sought after 
than election.”” It was also said that in many 
places “ the sectarian spirit showed itself a great 
obstacle to progress.”” A report from the Central 
Provinces declared that during the decade 1902-12 
** some improvement in municipal administration 
was recorded, but in many cases very little interest 
was shown in elections.’’ In Burma, “ elections, 
generally speaking, aroused very little interest, 
and it was frequently necessary to nominate 
members to seats for which candidates were not 


128 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


forthcoming.’’ The same province was successful 
in giving these rather dull matters a distinctly 
humorous touch. The municipal committee of 
Bassein, fired with a sudden and unexpected desire 
to plunge deep into the most advanced expedients 
of democracy, took a referendum on the question 
of undertaking a water-supply scheme. The 
verdict was against the enterprise ; but the com- 
mittee, undismayed by this rebuff, decided that 
the people did not understand the proposal put 
before them and proceeded with the undertaking. 

In the case of the rural boards, the great size 
of many of the districts and the lack of means 
of rapid travel to which I have alluded are 
sometimes formidable obstacles in the way of 
regular attendance on the part of members. I 
came across a case in the United Provinces where 
one member had fifty and another a hundred miles 
of unmetalled road to travel over when attending 
meetings of the board, and I was told of another 
case of a member being waylaid and robbed en 
route to the scene of his labours. Away from 
the beaten tracks this is not an altogether un- 
known experience. An Indian official stated in 
evidence before the Royal Commission on the 
Public Services in India, that even for an official 
it was sometimes “‘a very difficult task to pass 
through wild and dangerous tracts like Chota 
Nagpur”; and he added, in explanation of a 
certain falling off in the number of inspections 
carried out in those parts, that “ two inspectors 
breathed their last from the bad effects of a long 
and tedious journey.”’ 

Another cause of shortcoming is a certain lack 
of appreciation of the importance of modern 
ideas on the subject of sanitation. ‘“ The usual 
attitude of a municipal body towards the govern- 
ment sanitary authorities,’ declared an eminent 
medical officer in evidence before the Public 


LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 129 


Services Commission, “is one of patient tolera- 
“tion. They look upon the department as one of 
the inflictions of a beneficent Government. An 
officer of the department reports on the sanitary 
condition of a certain town; makes, perhaps, five 
or six recommendations. These are either frankly 
opposed because the commissioners consider they 
know better than sanitary experts, or the time- 
honoured excuse of want of money finally disposes 
of the recommendations.” This last difficulty— 
lack of resources—is, as a matter of fact, one of 
the chief obstacles in the way of advance. If 
the special cases of Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, 
Rangoon, and Bangalore be excluded, the remain- 
ing 726 municipalities have a total income of 
under £5,000,000, or, on the average, well under 
£7000 each per annum, while the total income of 
the whole of the rural boards of the continent, 
district, subdivisional, and, in the case of Madras, 
union panchayats as well, amounts only to 
£6,250,000 a year. Small wonder that the time- 
honoured excuse of want of money is frequently 
forthcoming. 

Another cause of lack of enthusiasm was un- 
doubtedly to be found in the measure of official 
control which it was thought necessary to impose 
upon the newly created bodies, and which was 
retained long after the period when really healthy 
self-governing institutions might have been ex- 
pected to have outgrown the necessity for such 
tutelage. The importance of having on the 
boards various officials as well as representatives 
of races or classes which might fail to secure 
election, made it necessary to retain a considerable 
_ proportion of the seats on all these bodies to be 
filled by nomination. There was a natural tend- 
ency, too, for the actual work of administration 
to devolve largely upon the official members, 
whose ordinary duties brought them into much 

K 


130 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


closer touch with the administrative require- 
ments of town or district than was the case with 
the average non-official member. In the case of 
the district boards the work devolved mainly 
upon the district officer, who in most cases was 
ex-officio chairman of the board. 

This cause of indifference on the part of the 
people came into sudden prominence when, in 
August 1917, Parliament announced its intention 
of giving wide application to the principles of 
election and popular control in the higher spheres 
of government in India; and the Government of 
India stated their policy in the matter of local 
self-government consequent upon this announce- 
ment in May 1918. Stress was laid upon the part 
which local self-government was designed to 
play as a training ground for those who would 
undertake greater responsibilities and wield more 
extensive powers in a higher sphere. Political 
education, it was declared, must take precedence 
over departmental efficiency ; and the measure 
of official guidance and control which had hitherto 
been maintained was, as far as possible, to be 
dispensed with. 

To-day—in Bengal, at any rate — district 
boards elect their own non-official chairmen, and 
relaxation of official control has, undoubtedly, 
given a much-needed stimulus to interest in local 
government. 

But the fundamental cause of the disappoint- 
ing results of nigh on three-quarters of a century 
of endeavour is to be found in the incorrigible 
belief of the English as a race in the superiority 
of their own institutions over those of all other 
people, however different the conditions may be. 
This is meeting with tardy recognition to-day. 
In the official report presented to Parliament for 
the year 1920, it is admitted that in no other 
branch of civic activity as in that of local self- 


LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 131 


government is “ the contrast between India and 
. progressive countries at present so marked.” But 
it is explained that “ the institutions of local self- 
government in their present form are a creation of 
British rule, artificially implanted ” upon Indian 
soil; and that the submerged foundations “‘ of 
indigenous institutions framed for ends not dis- 
similar,’’ which were in large measure destroyed 
during the anarchy of the eighteenth century, 
‘‘ were not utilised to the best possible advantage 
by British administrators,”’ so that “ the existing 
institutions of local self-government are to a 
considerable degree alien from the spirit of the 
people.” Some years earlier a Royal Commis- 
sion, inquiring into the possibilities of a greater 
measure of decentralisation in the administration, 
had expressed very similar views. They did not 
think it possible, even if it were expedient, to 
restore the ancient village system under which the 
community was responsible for each of its mem- 
bers, and in turn claimed the right to regulate his 
actions; but they did hold that it was “* most 
desirable, alike in the interests of decentralisation 
and in order to associate the people with the tasks 
of the administration, that an attempt should be 
made to constitute and develop village panchayats 
for the administration of local affairs.”?1 The 

added that the foundation of any stable edifice 
must be the village, “as being an area of much 
greater antiquity than administrative creations 
such as tahsils ” ; and they expressed the opinion 
that the scant success of the efforts which had 
been made to introduce a system of rural self- 
government was largely due to the fact that we 
had not built up from the bottom. This view at 
last met with acceptance in the highest quarters, 
for the Secretary of State, Lord Morley, wrote in 


1 Report of the Royal Commission on Decentralisation, issued in 
9. 


182 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


his despatch on the reform scheme of 1909, that 
the village in India had been the fundamental 
and indestructible unit of the social system, sur- 
viving the downfall of dynasty after dynasty. 
‘I desire your Excellency in Council,” he con- 
tinued, ‘‘ to consider the best way of carrying out 
a policy that would make the village a starting- 
point in public life.”’ 

That India evolved many centuries ago a 
highly developed system of local self-government 
is undoubted; that it differed in kind from the 
system which we have imported into India from 
the West is equally certain. Corporate life in 
ancient India took the form of guilds, notably of 
crafts guilds and merchant guilds. Such organ- 
isations came into being spontaneously, and them- 
selves evolved the laws by which their activities 
were governed. Such laws, according to the 
ancient law-books of the country, commanded 
recognition at the hands of the king (t.e. the 
central government), who was further charged 
with the duty of seeing that they were respected. 
That “cultivators, traders, herdsmen, money- 
lenders, and artisans have authority to lay down 
laws for their respective classes,” is asserted by 
Gautama some centuries B.c., and that “ the king 
must discipline and establish again on the path 
of duty all such as have erred from their own 
laws, whether families, castes, guilds, associations, 
or people of certain districts,’ is emphasised by 
Yajnavalkya. These bodies, therefore, were in- 
dependent of the central government; they were 
not its offspring, nor were their functions the pro- 
duct of devolution, as in the case of such bodies 
as the borough and county councils of Great 
Britain. On the contrary, they were social organ- 
isations with authority which was not derived 
from but which compelled the recognition of the 
central government. Side by side with, or out 


LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 133 


of, these early guilds came into being village 
. assemblies modelled on similar lines and possess- 
ing an equivalent status, which seem to have 
exercised judicial and municipal powers, and to 
have administered endowments for secular and 
religious purposes. Dr. Radhakumud Mookerji 
gives a most interesting account of the constitu- 
tion and working of such a body, derived from 
two inscriptions in the Vaikuntha Perumal temple 
at Uttaramallur in Southern India, probably of 
the tenth century A.D. 

The picture of village government which he 
draws as a result of his study of these and other 
inscriptions is as follows. The controlling body 
was the village assembly, consisting of all persons 
possessing a certain property qualification, to- 
gether with moral fitness and a definite standard 
of proficiency in legal and religious literature. The 
actual work of the village was entrusted to a 
number of committees, membership of which was 
open only to persons possessing certain qualifica- 
tions, amongst which were the ownership of a 
specified amount of tax-paying land, residence on 
his own property, knowledge of the Mantras and 
the Brahmanas, a capacity for business, and an 
age qualification of between thirty-five and 
seventy years. The village was divided into a 
number of wards—jin the case of Uttaramallur 
thirty —and at the time of the appointment of 
committees the residents of each ward assembled, 
and each wrote down on a ticket the name of the 
person whom he desired to represent his ward. 
The tickets from each ward were made up in 
packets and placed in an empty pot, which, in 
the presence of the village assembly, was held 
aloft by the oldest priest present. A packet was 
then drawn by a young boy, and the tickets un- 
done and shaken up in another pot. The process 
of drawing from this pot then took place, and the 


1384 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


name on the ticket was read out and accepted. 
In the Uttaramallur inscriptions mention is made 
of an “annual committee,’ consisting only of 
persons who had already served on the “ garden 
committee’? and “tank (water-supply) com- 
mittee,”’ or who were advanced in learning or in 
age, a body clearly exercising general powers of 
supervision. Other committees were the “‘ garden 
committee,” the “tank committee,”’ the “ gold 
committee ’—probably a body charged with the 
administration of finance—a “ Panchavara com- 
mittee,’ the functions of which are not at present 
known with certainty, and a committee for “ super- 
vision of justice,’’ whose duty it was to convene 
meetings of the village assembly and conduct 
elections to the committees. 

Under such a system a village was an 
autonomous unit managing its own affairs largely 
on communal principles, and though the central 
government, in the person of the king, exercised 
ultimate authority over his people, as the symbol 
of the State he appeared to them “ like a remote 
abstraction, with no direct touch with their daily 
life, which was governed by the social organisa- 
tion. The points of contact between the State 
and the ordinary interests of the daily life of the 
people were, indeed, very few.”’ } 

Much new light has been thrown upon this 
aspect of the organisation of society in ancient 
India by the discovery at Tanjore, early in the 
present century, of a work on political science 
compiled by Kautilya, the chief minister of the 
Kmperor Chandragupta, about the year 300 B.c. 
In still earlier days political science—in Sanskrit 
Arthashastra—seems to have been a favourite 
subject with scholars, but to have fallen into 
neglect at the time of Kautilya, for his Artha- 
shastra is a compilation made after study of 

1 Dr. R. Mookerji. 


LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 135 


numerous earlier works which he rescued from 
. oblivion. Amongst topics of great interest dealt 
with by these early thinkers is that of the origin 
of monarchy and the powers and functions of the 
king. The question is admirably treated by Pro- 
fessor D. R. Bhandarkar in a series of lectures 
delivered at the University of Calcutta in 1918, 
and it is to these that I am indebted for the 
material upon which the brief sketch which 
follows is based. 

Prominent amongst the theories of the origin 
of kingship which were prevalent in these very 
early days was that of the social contract. It is 
certainly surprising to find that a theory com- 
monly supposed to have originated with Western 
thinkers of the seventeenth century a.p.—Hobbes, 
Locke, and Rousseau—- was a commonplace of 
Hindu political thinkers six centuries before 
Christ. Yet a study of the Arthashastras leaves 
no doubt that this was so. Kautilya states 
that the people, in order to quell disorders 
amongst themselves and to ensure the scales of 
justice being held even between the strong and 
the weak, the high and the low, the rich and the 
poor, elected a king to discharge this duty, allot- 
ting him “ one-sixth of their grains and one-tenth 
of their merchandise as his share.” The main 
respect in which the Hindu theory seems to have 
differed from that of its European sponsors of the 
seventeenth century A.D. was as to the extent of 
the power thus transferred to the king. Hobbes’ 
view that absolute power was irrevocably trans- 
ferred to the ruler differs materially from that of 
the Hindus. Kautilya makes it clear that the 
king was regarded as the servant of the people, 
the share of grain and merchandise awarded to 
him being held to be a wage paid for services 
rendered. So much so, indeed, that if the king 
failed to recover stolen property, he was expected 


136 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


to compensate the sufferer from his own purse. 
‘* Whatever of the property of citizens robbed by 
thieves the king cannot recover shall be made 
good from his own pocket.” 4 

The theory of the social contract is also set 
forth in the Buddhist scriptures, wherein an 
account of the origin of kingship is put into the 
mouth of Buddha himself. In the course of a 
conversation with a young Brahman, Vasettha, 
he speaks of the confusion caused in past ages by 
the increase of crime amongst the people, and he 
goes on to tell of the measures concerted by them 
for dealing with the state of affairs which had 
arisen. ‘“‘ What if we were to select a certain 
being,” they are represented as arguing, “ who 
should be wrathful when indignation is right, 
who should censure that which should rightly be 
censured, and should banish him who deserves 
to be banished?” This proposal is acted upon. 
‘*Then, Vasettha,’’ declares Buddha, ‘“ those 
beings went to the being among them who was 
the handsomest, the best favoured, the most 
attractive, the most capable, and said to him: 
‘Come now, good being, be indignant at that 
whereat one should rightly be indignant, censure 
that which should rightly be censured, banish him 
who deserves to be banished. And we will con- 
tribute to thee a portion of our rice.’ And he 
consented, and did so, and they gave him-a pro- 
portion of their rice.” ? 

Emphasis is repeatedly laid upon the status of 
the king as being that of a servant of the public, 
and any assumption of arrogance on his part was 
apt to call forth caustic reminders of his true 
position. ‘* What superciliousness is thine, O 
king!” exclaims Aryadeva, a Buddhist monk, 


1 Kautilya’s “‘ Arthashastra,” quoted by Professor Bhandarkar. 
2 “The Agganha Suttanta of the Digha Nikaya,” translated by 
T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids. 


- 


Plate 10. 


CAVE CHAPTER-HALLS OF THE BUDDHISTS 


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LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 137 


‘“ who art a mere servant of the body politic, and 
who receivest the sixth part of the produce as 
thine wages ? ”’ } 

There is another theory of the origin of king- 
ship in the Arthashastras, namely, that the king 
was ordained by God to quell the social disorders 
that broke out among men, and that he was, 
indeed, an incarnation of the divine. This theory 
is held in reverence to this day, as I can vouch 
from personal knowledge. But Professor Bhan- 
darkar argues that even those holding it did not 
associate the idea of absolute despotism with the 
institution of monarchy, and he quotes from a 
Sanskrit law-book, the Sukra-niti, in illustration of 
the position of those who accepted the theory of 
the divine origin of kingship: “‘ The king who is 
virtuous is a part of the gods. He who is other- 
wise is a part of the demons.”’ 

The king, then, according to Hindu theory, 
was the servant of the public charged with certain 
specified duties in the interests of the common 
weal, and with powers which were subject to 
definite limitations. Professor Bhandarkar gives 
an effective illustration of this in the shape of a 
story culled from the rich store of Indian folk-lore 
which the Buddhists collected and edited to suit 
their purpose — its incorporation in their scrip- 
tures under the title of the Jataka tales, or stories 
of the previous births of Buddha. A king of 
Takshasila, who had fallen under the spell of an 
ogress disguised as a beautiful woman, is requested 
by the object of his infatuation to grant her 
authority over his kingdom. His reply provides 
remarkable confirmation of the limitations on the 
power of a king set forth above. ‘“‘ My love,”’ he 
objects, “‘ I have no power over the subjects of 
my kingdom; I am not their lord and master. I 
have only jurisdiction over those who revolt and 


1 Quoted from the Vinaya by Professor Bhandarkar. 


1388 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


do wrong. So I cannot give you power and 
authority over the whole kingdom.” That over 
which he had control, namely, his own palace, he 
did place at her disposal. 

The conclusion to be drawn, then, from the 
works on political science current amongst the 
Hindus some centuries B.c. is that stated by 
Dr. Mookerji in the quotation from his ‘* Local 
Government in Ancient India”? which I have 
given above. Later on, as life became more 
complex and a greater elaboration of the ad- 
ministration became necessary, the power of the 
king increased, and the control of the central 
government over the lives of the people tended 
to become more exacting. But enough is now 
known of early Hindu theory and practice in the 
sphere of administration to make it tolerably 
certain that it was based on the existence of 
innumerable semi-independent self-governing 
bodies, and that “ the conception of the king as 
the servant of the state,” to quote another Indian 
authority of the present day, ‘‘ was one of the basic 
principles of political thought in Ancient India.”’? 

And it is the exaltation of the past in his 
history that appeals most forcibly to the sentiment 
of the Indian nationalist of to-day. The only 
suggestions of a constructive character in the 
sphere of government so far made by the extreme 
wing of the Indian Nationalist party are those 
recently put forward by Mr. C. R. Das as 
President of the Indian National Congress which 
met at the close of 1922. After stating that in 
his belief the parliamentary form of government 
introduced from the West is not a government 
‘““ by the people and for the people,”’ he declares 
that no scheme of government which does not 
conform to this description can ever be regarded 


1 Professor Pramatha Nath Banerji, in his ‘‘ Public Administration 
in Ancient India.” 


LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 139 


as the true foundation of Swaraj. The outline of 
the scheme which he then advocates as the ideal 
system for India, follows so faithfully in its main 
outlines the system of two thousand and more 
years ago which has been sketched above, that 
his words are worth quoting in full. ‘To me 
the organisation of village life and the practical 
autonomy of small local centres are more import- 
ant than either provincial autonomy or central 
responsibility ; and if the choice lay between the 
two I would unhesitatingly accept the autonomy 
of the local centres. I must not be understood 
as implying that the village centres will be dis- 
connected units. They must be held together by 
a system of co-operation and integration. For 
the present there must be power in the hands of 
the provincial and Indian Governments ; but the 
ideal should be accepted once for all, that the 
proper function of the central authority, whether 
in the provincial or in the Indian Government, is 
to advise, having a residuary power of control 
only in case of need, and to be exercised under 
proper safeguards. I maintain that real Swaraj 
can only be attained by vesting the power of 
government in these local centres.”’ 

I have devoted some space to a consideration 
of the system of administration in force in ancient 
India because of the obvious bearing which it has 
upon the question which I have been discussing, 
namely, the unsuitability of the particular type 
of local self-government which we have instituted 
to the genius of the Indian people. It is, I think, 
a not unreasonable deduction from the knowledge 
which we now possess of the theory and practice 
of government in ancient India that if, instead of 
creating municipal and district boards of the 
Western type, we had begun by re-creating the 
village organisations which were congenial to the 
people, local self-government would have made 


140 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


more satisfactory progress than has actually been 
the case. The steps which have been taken in 
various parts of India in recent years to establish 
village self-governing bodies have been handi- 
capped by the prior existence of district and local 
boards. Instead of being the foundation of the 
whole edifice, they have had to be tacked on to 
the already existing institutions, and difficulty has, 
consequently, been experienced in fitting them 
into the general scheme. It had been the in- 
tention of those who framed the Bengal Local 
Self-government Bill in 1883 to make the village 
the basis of local self-government. Union Com- 
mittees, covering on the average an area of twelve 
square miles each, were to be established for the 
management of affairs of immediate interest to 
the villagers. The Secretary of State, however, 
insisted upon the district being made the unit, 
and when the Local Self-government Act of 1885 
was passed it was the district, consequently, and 
not the village, which constituted the administra- 
tive unit of local self-government. An expert 
Committee—the Bengal District Administration 
Committee—expressed the opinion thirty years 
later that “* this was to begin local self-government 
at the wrong end,” with the result that smaller 
bodies were left ‘“‘ dependent on the charity ”’ of 
the district board and ‘“‘ with no clearly-defined 
position in the general scheme.”’ It was not until 
1919 that a special Act known as the Bengal 
Village Self-government Act was passed with the 
object of placing union boards as far as possible 
upon a sound statutory basis, and of providing 
for the creation of village courts and benches. 
This salutary return in the direction of the ancient 
indigenous system is breathing new life into local 
self-government. Let me conduct the reader to 
a Bengal village, the scene of the activities of a 
newly founded union board. 


CHAPTER XII 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE 


In the rainy season—June to October—the vast 
alluvial plains of Bengal present a wonderful 
spectacle. In Eastern Bengal the whole land is 
under water—but water from which spring amaz- 
ing crops of jute and rice tinting the whole world 
with vivid green. Villages appear as small islands 
in an emerald sea, the houses, buried in dense 
clumps of shady trees—-tamarind, nim, mango, 
pipal, jack, banana, palm, and bamboo — being 
built on sites raised artificially a foot or two 
above the normal level of the monsoon floods. 
The great expanses of the rivers are covered with 
flotillas of boats with sails of white, brown, and 
blue. Creeks, on the placid surfaces of which 
children may often be seen paddling themselves 
about in circular pots of black clay, eat their way 
into the village sites. Often a curious pheno- 
menon may be witnessed, a boat sailing across 
what appears to be a field of jute or rice. Both 
crops grow in varying depths of water, usually a 
few feet. But there are parts of the land where 
shallow depressions in the surface give the flood 
a greater depth—up to fifteen feet and more. 
The existence of these deeps is only to be detected 
by the particular variety of rice showing above 
the surface of the water. One would hardly 
expect to find crops growing in fifteen feet of 
141 


142 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


water. Nevertheless there they are, thick crops 
of a curious long-stemmed paddy which has so 
adapted itself to environment that on a rising 
flood it is capable of growing as much as a foot 
in twelve hours. In the Ain-1-Akbari, Abu Fazl 
Allami has recorded that “as fast as the water 
rises the stalks grow, so that the ear is never 
immersed, inasmuch as those experienced in such 
matters have taken the measure of a single night’s 
growth at sixty cubits.”’ I do not know the size 
of Abu Fazl Allami’s cubit ; but the figure which 
I have given above would be vouched for by the 
agricultural department. 

Such crops are reaped from boats; but 
ordinarily the man of Eastern Bengal spends the 
day waist deep or more in water. In a world in 
which the cultivated land is under water for as 
much as five months in the year, and that at 
the time of the growing, and in the case of jute 
the harvesting of the chief crops, man necessarily 
becomes an amphibian. Yet, oddly enough, he 
seems to dislike getting his head wet, and it is a 
common sight to see a man clad only in a modest 
loin cloth, standing up to his armpits in water 
and wearing a large circular hat of plaited bamboo 
to keep off the rain. 

The waters, however, do not have things all 
their own way. They carry with them large 
quantities of fine silt in suspension, which sooner 
or later they are bound to deposit. So it comes 
about that in the great estuary through which 
the combined waters of the Ganges, the Brahma- 
putra, and the Megna— finely named “ the river 
of storms ’—pour themselves into the Bay of 
Bengal, a fight between land and water is in 
constant progress. The mainland may be washed 
away; but a little farther out, where the silt- 
laden water of the rivers mingles with the water 
of the bay, silt is dropped and islands make 


THE INDIAN VILLAGE 143 


their appearance above the surface. I know of 
~no better description of this curious battle-ground 
between land and sea than that given by Mr. 
Thompson in his final report on the survey and 
settlement operations in the district of Noakhali. 
*“ Seen from the mainland across a few miles of 
smooth water the coast of North Hatia or any of 
the other islands within. sight appears like a 
pencil line drawn along the indistinct horizon 
between water and sky which, as they meet, 
take both of them the same silver-grey shades. 
They are thicker lines when the tide is out, and 
even on approaching near, the effect is the same 
—a, level line with the tones of a charcoal sketch.”’ 
The battle is a long-drawn one. At times during 
the past two centuries the mainland has bitten 
into the bay but has again retreated, and is 
now, according to Mr. Thompson, much where it 
was two centuries ago. Nevertheless it continues 
to lay a broad foundation beneath the waters of 
the ocean upon which some day, surely, there 
will be built up dry land. For immediately 
opposite the Megna the five-fathom line has been 
pushed out appreciably during the last few 
decades, and off the Ganges delta is thirty-five 
miles away. This becomes significant when com- 
pared with the deltas of the Mississippi and the 
Nile, in neither of which cases is the five-fathom 
line more than a few hundred yards from the 
nearest land. 

In Eastern Bengal the rivers are the highways, 
and in the monsoon season smaller channels 
innumerable take the place of country lanes. 
This is the most convenient season for travel. 
The heat and moisture are oppressive, and the 
intrusion of an insect life vast in numbers and 
bewildering in variety is a source of exasperation ; 
but one can then move freely where one wills, for 
water, the medium of travel, is universal. And 


144 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


the scene through which one passes, though in 
a sense monotonous, has an undoubted attraction, 
for seldom will one see elsewhere so glorious a 
mingling of so many differing shades of green. 
The lighter or darker tones predominate accord- 
ing to the extent of cultivation. Where crops 
are extensive the jungle of palms, plantains, 
and other trees resembles a series of small islands 
in a vast bright green sea of rice and jute. Where 
the jungle is more aggressive and widespread the 
tables are turned, and the stretches of rice and 
jute resemble bays and fiords pushing their way 
into a sombre shore. 

Little is to be seen at first sight of the dwellings 
of man, the jungle that surrounds them is so thick. 
But as one pushes one’s way along narrow 
openings through it in an atmosphere close and 
heavy almost beyond belief, one comes upon 
unexpectedly large numbers of houses, frail and 
unimpressive certainly, so far as appearance goes, 
but surprisingly commodious and clean. A culti- 
vator’s house—or bari—consists often enough of 
a number of semi-detached sheds of wattle built 
round and opening on to a courtyard. The big 
man of the village may have a more substantial 
residence of brick. 

To such a village in the Dacca district I came 
not long after the passing of the Village Self- 
government Act of 1919, to meet the members 
of the union board; and was conducted to a 
pandal erected in a small open space, the counter- 
part of the English village green. All round the 
pandal in perspiring groups stood the sparsely 
clad population of the village, interested spectators 
of what was going forward. In front of me in 
the centre of the pandal stood a table on which 
were placed the books of the union board; and 
round me were seated the members of the board, 
bearded and reverend seigneurs, men who carried 


THE INDIAN VILLAGE 145 


the confidence of their fellow-villagers. One or 
“two spoke English tolerably well—the school- 
master of the nearest secondary school, a retired 
Government servant spending the evening of his 
days in the quiet of his ancestral home after 
thirty years of useful and strenuous service as a 
subordinate judicial officer, and a lawyer practis- 
ing at the nearest subdivisional headquarters 
town. The remaining half-dozen—the union 
boards consist of nine members, of whom six 
are elected and three nominated—were typical 
villagers with no knowledge of English and 
engaged in various occupations besides the culti- 
vation of the land: one a shopkeeper, another a 
boatman, and so on. 

A small tax known as the chaukidari tax for 
the upkeep of the village police is a compulsory 
levy; but under the Village Self- government 
Act a union board may impose additional taxation 
to enable it to undertake various works for the 
benefit of the villages. I was shown the accounts. 
The board, though of recent creation, had imposed 
additional taxation amounting to a quarter of 
the chaukidari tax. Did the villagers object? I 
asked. At first, yes; but it was explained 
that the board required the money for the con- 
struction of certain wells. Now above all things 
the villagers wanted wells, for a supply of good 
drinking water was a long-felt want. They 
would see what the board could do. The board, 
it seemed, did very well; and during the coming 
year the rate of taxation was to be doubled for 
further improvements. Presently I saw the wells, 
excellent circular shafts lined with brick, some 
feet in diameter, and with a neat coping round 
the top. The cost had been Rs. 300—£20—per 
well, and neither the district board nor any other 
agency, I was told, could construct such wells 
for less than double the sum, for the village 

L 


146 «INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


had done the work itself; the chairman of the 
board had kept the accounts and done all the 
clerical work, a member of the board had super- 
vised construction, the labour had come from 
the village itself. There had been, in fact, no 
middleman charges, and the village had got the 
full value of every rupee spent. The year before 
twenty-five of the boards in the district had 
raised no revenue by taxation other than that 
of the chaukidari tax; this year all but fourteen 
of the one hundred and thirty union boards 
which had been established within the area had 
levied additional rates. 

After the inspection of the wells we returned 
to the pandal for further talk, and I was told of 
a scheme upon which the villagers and board 
alike had set their hearts, the excavation of a 
large tank or reservoir. But the project, they 
said, was a big one which, even with additional 
taxation, must remain for long beyond their 
means. The scene during the discussion which 
followed is one which remains deeply impressed 
upon my memory—the members of the board 
seated round me, quiet, dignified men, speaking 
seldom, and always with deliberation; behind 
me one or two of the young men of the village 
producing with the aid of large palm-leaf fans 
a faint but none the less welcome stir in the hot, 
suffocating air; outside the pandal in the fierce 
glare of the sun naked, dark-skinned children 
playing on the water’s edge, and in the middle 
distance, against a green background of tropical 
vegetation, the close ranks of stolid but interested 
onlookers. During a pause in the conversation 
an elderly man of good presence rose and asked 
permission to speak. His words were translated 
to me sentence by sentence. The tank would 
benefit the whole people of the village where he 
had been born and amongst whom he had been 


‘MHLLOG HHL »-NAWNSLAVAD TOVTIIA 


‘Il avd 








THE INDIAN VILLAGE 147 


brought up. Throughout his life he had toiled 
upon the waters of his motherland and was now 
a serang (river pilot), well known to and trusted 
by the river steamer companies. For the measure 
of prosperity which he had been vouchsafed he 
desired to show his gratitude to Providence. 
How better could he do so than by contributing 
to a work of benefit to the people of his village ? 
And he laid before me there and then an ap- 
preciable sum in currency notes to be given in 
trust to the board for the carrying out of the 
needed work. The whole scene recalled vividly 
a mental picture of ancient India in the days 
when the indigenous irrigation system consisted 
of tanks and channels “‘ which were built partly 
by individual benefactions and partly by com- 
munal enterprise.” } 

It is worth recalling that under the old Indian 
system of village assemblies this practice of 
making gifts for public purposes was carried far. 
It was not unusual for a private individual to vest 
in the assembly a capital sum the income from 
which was to provide some service of a religious 
or secular character. There are inscriptions which 
tell us, for example, of a number of endowments 
made by private individuals for the proper 
maintenance of a tank at Uttaramallur in the 
district of Chingleput in Southern India; one a 
gift of land, and others gifts of gold duly accepted 
by the Assembly to defray the annual cost of 
clearing the tank of silt. One such endowment 
is referred to in detail as a gift of 200 kalanju of 
gold, the interest from which, amounting to 30 
kalatiju a year, was to be spent by the Assembly 
on this particular service. It is added that in 
gratitude the Assembly exempted the donor from 
certain taxes.2, There are many such records of 


1 ** Local Self-government in Ancient India,”’ by R. Mookerji. 
2 Ibid. 


148 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


endowments to be administered by village assem- 
blies, a notable type being those for religious 
ministrations; such, for example, as the provision 
of lamps to be maintained perpetually burning 
before the altar of some temple. I am not aware 
of endowments of this latter kind having yet 
been made to the village boards which have 
come into existence under recent legislation ; but 
it is noteworthy that, during the year of which I 
am writing, gifts for secular purposes aggregat- 
ing Rs. 10,000 were entrusted to various village 
boards in the Dacca district. 

The trial of petty criminal cases and civil suits 
was a function of the guilds of ancient India, and 
the experimental establishment of village courts 
and benches under the Act of 1919 met with im- 
mediate success. In the year 1921, 652 criminal 
cases and 2218 civil suits were instituted before 
fourteen such courts and benches, a single village 
court disposing of 260 civil suits and 66 criminal 
cases. 

It would seem, therefore, that the village is 
still the fundamental unit in the communal life of 
India ; and it is worth noting in passing, as signifi- 
cant of the feelings of the village population, that 
at a recent conference of representatives of union 
boards in the Dacca district, a proposal was put 
forward for discussion for the abolition of district 
boards. More significant still, the proposal was 
carried. 


* % * %* k 


I have said that, in addition to the existence 
throughout the continent of an administrative 
system of a Western type, the visitor will notice, 
as a further striking result of the coming of Great 
Britain to India, the introduction into a country 
essentially agricultural of the industrialism of 
Europe. It is, of course, to the towns that he 


THE INDIAN VILLAGE 149 


must turn if he would ascertain how this twig of 
the Western tree is faring as a result of the experi- 

ment of grafting it on to the ancient tree-trunk of 
the East. And to the towns of modern India, 
therefore, we must now journey. 


CHAPTER XIII 
THE INDUSTRIALISM OF THE WEST 


TEN or twelve years ago Sir Theodore Morison 
published a book under the title of “The 
Economic Transition in India,’’ in which he 
painted a picture of the growing industrialisation 
of the country ; and he took Bombay, where “ the 
industrial revolution has already been accom- 
plished,”’ as illustrative of the India of the future. 
Rural India, ‘“* with its brown villages and never- 
ending fields,’’ he spoke of as “ the India which 
is passing away ; Bombay,” he declared, “is the 
presage of the future.” 

The great industrial concerns of Bombay are, 
it is true, almost entirely in the hands of Indians ; 
and there are doubtless not a few amongst her 
public men who view with pride and satisfaction 
the growing industries of their country. Sir T. 
Morison, indeed, was able to quote such opinions 
from the public utterances of men like the late 
Mr. Justice Ranade and Professor V. G. Kale. 
Nevertheless there are others who view not only 
with grave concern, but with intense dislike, the 
coming of this particular form of Western civilisa- 
tion. Quite recently an Indian nationalist scoffed 
at the suggestion that the conditions under which 
the labouring population lived and worked in 
Bombay might be improved. ‘“‘ What is the good 
of trying to improve Bombay ?” he asked. ‘It 

150 


INDUSTRIALISM OF THE WEST 151 


is a foreign wen on the face of India. There is 
only one thing to do with it: abolish it.””4_ And 
Mr. Gandhi’s campaign against machine-made 
goods of all kinds and his amazing endeavour to 
introduce the ancient spinning-wheel into every 
Indian household is of too recent date to need 
further elaboration. Moreover, this is a subject 
upon which I may have something to say in 
a final volume of these impressions. For the 
present I am merely concerned to give a general 
idea of the nature and extent of the inroad which 
modern industrialism has made. 

Two great textile industries flourish in India— 
the cotton industry in Bombay, Madras, and 
certain up-country centres, such as Ahmedabad, 
Nagpur, and Cawnpore, and the jute industry in 
Calcutta. They possess this characteristic in 
common, that their successive periods of pro- 
sperity have been the outcome of war. In the 
course of a year 2,800,000 bales of raw cotton pour 
into Bombay. Of these 1,100,000 are required 
to feed the mills of the city. And amongst the 
schemes now being carried out for its improve- 
ment is the provision of a new cotton green in 
the northern area, having 200 go-downs with a 
storage capacity of 1,500,000 bales, and an equal 
number of open-air storage plots with accommoda- 
tion for 800,000 bales. This great industry — 
taking the whole of India—boasts of nearly 
7,000,000 spindles and 124,000 looms. It pro- 
duces every year from 600,000,000 to 700,000,000 
pounds of yarn and over 1,580,000,000 yards of 
woven goods, and it employs from 300,000 to 
350,000 persons. It was first planted in Bombay 
city in 1854, and of the 260 cotton mills in India, 
more than 180 are located in that presidency 
to-day. An analysis of the dividends paid by fifty- 
eight leading Bombay mills in the year following 


1 See the ‘** Manchester Guardian ”’ of July 1, 1922. 


152 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


the close of the Great War shows an average rate of 
distribution of 44 per cent. There is, indeed, no 
need to quarrel with Sir T. Morison’s assertion 
that ‘“‘in Bombay the industrial revolution has 
already been accomplished.” 

But it would be a mistake to assume that 
Bombay is typical of India. The lines of its 
development have been determined largely by 
geographical conditions, and are exceptional 
rather than typical. The city is the proud 
possessor not merely of a harbour which can be 
described without exaggeration as magnificent, 
but of the only haven of any importance in an 
immense coast-line running from Karachi in the 
north to Cape Comorin in the south. Another 
geographical feature, the importance of which has 
been realised only in recent years, is its proximity 
to the Ghats Mountains, which rise like a vast 
rampart at no great distance from the coast-line, 
with which they run parallel, and against which 
the western monsoon inevitably breaks. 

Meteorological statistics in India are always 
interesting, as has been shown in the opening 
chapter. The statistics of the annual rainfall on 
the Ghats Mountains behind Bombay proved of 
peculiar interest to the manufacturers of the city. 
This can be seen by the most cursory examination 
of the returns of the rainfall. For example, at 
Igatpuri, a station on the main line of railway a 
little short of the summit over which the line 
climbs, the annual rainfall is as much as 1380 
inches ; whereas at Goti, only six miles further 
east, only 60 inches are registered. From which 
it is a simple deduction that the monsoon bursting 
against the wall of mountains precipitates vast 
quantities of water which simply run to waste. 


1 See *‘A General Review of the Conditions and Prospects of 
British Trade in India during the Years 1919-21,” by Mr. 'T. M. 
Ainscough, O.B.E. 


INDUSTRIALISM OF THE WEST 1538 


Why, then, should not this volume of potential 
energy be caught and harnessed ? The immense 
possibilities suggested by these meteorological 
statistics were insistently pressed upon certain 
wealthy and capable citizens of Bombay by a 
well-known character of that city, Mr. David 
Gostling, with the result that in due course steps 
were taken to exploit them. The Tata Hydro- 
Electric Power Supply Company came into exist- 
ence in 1910, with an authorised capital of two 
crores of rupees,! and the works constructed by 
the company were formally opened in February 
1915. The water is drawn from three lakes to a 
receiving reservoir, whence it is carried in pipes 
to the power-house at Khopoli at the foot of the 
Ghats, 1725 feet below, developing a pressure of 
750 lb. per square inch in the course of its descent. 
This project, originally designed to supply the 
city with 30,000 electrical horse-power, under- 
went expansion during construction, the capital 
of the company being raised to three crores 
and the power provided to over 40,000 horse- 
power. 

When once the advantage of this method of 
developing energy was realised, a ready demand 
for current arose. It was estimated that the 
cotton mills of Bombay alone would require 
100,000 horse-power, and that the total demands 
of the city would amount to 160,000 horse-power. 
A new company accordingly came into existence 
some eighteen months after the opening of the 
Khopoli station, for the purpose of carrying out 
a further project designed when completed to 
supply 100,000 horse-power. In this case the 
water is drawn from the Andhra river and the 
power-station is at Bhivpuri, about seventeen 
miles to the north of Khopoli. 

In 1919 a third company was formed, entitled 

1 One crore=10,000,000. 


154 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


the Tata Power Company, Ltd., for the purpose 
of carrying through another scheme known as the 
Nila-Mula, which when in full operation will be 
capable of generating 150,000 horse-power. 

Even this does not complete the list of hydro- 
electric projects associated with the name of the 
Tatas. The most ambitious scheme of all, known 
as the Koyna river project, has for its object the 
creation of a chemical industrial town at or near 
Jaigarh, a small inlet on the coast a hundred miles 
or so south of Bombay. Among the chief in- 
dustries to be undertaken will be the electro- 
chemical production of aluminium from bauxite, 
of which there are large deposits scattered over 
the Indian continent. The Koyna river, after 
rising near Mahabaleshwar, runs south for some 
distance parallel to the scarp of the Ghats chain 
before it turns east to flow into the Kistna. It 
has during this part of its course a catchment area 
of 350 square miles, with an average annual rain- 
fall of from 150 to 250 inches within two or three 
miles of a natural fall of 1700 feet. The reservoir, 
which will be formed by the construction of a dam, 
will have a gross storage capacity of 182,100 
million cubic feet, and the energy generated will 
amount to from 300,000 to 350,000 horse-power. 
When this great scheme is in operation there 
will be a prospect of there springing up at or 
near Jaigarh one of the largest combinations of 
electro-chemical industries in the world; and 
with these figures before one it is unnecessary to 
labour the importance to Bombay and its neigh- 
bourhood of the peculiar geographical position 
which it occupies. ‘* What city in the world is 
there like Bombay,”’ exclaimed an enthusiastic 
resident, “‘ with its magnificent twenty miles of 
littoral, with a gravity water-supply scheme 
delivering 90,000,000 gallons of water daily, and 
with the certainty of some 250,000 horse-power 


INDUSTRIALISM OF THE WEST 155 


hydro-electrically generated being available in 
the near future ? ” } 

Mention must be made, however, of a dis- 
advantage of some importance which is likewise 
due to her geographical position. Being situate 
on a very narrow island only twelve miles in 
length, the area of the city is inconveniently 
restricted. It necessarily followed that with the 
influx of a vast industrial population it became 
seriously overcrowded. A stroll through the in- 
dustrial quarters of the town is all that is required 
to show that within its walls its inhabitants jostle 
one another uncomfortably. Even before the 
War, pressure upon its space was so great that its 
citizens lived crushed together at the rate of over 
42,500 to the square mile—a figure exceeded in 
the case of one city only in the whole of India, 
that of the capital of the native state of Jeypore, 
which has a population of over 45,500 to the 
square mile. And with the boom in the cotton 
industry which arose out of the War, a large 
additional population streamed into the city, in- 
creasing the number of its inhabitants, according 
to conservative estimates, by as much as 25 per 
cent. Land in certain areas of the city sold not 
long ago at £37:10s. per square yard.” 

Such congestion called for drastic action, and 
the Government of Bombay took the lead in 
formulating a programme for the expansion of 
the city. A scheme was drawn up for the con- 
struction by Government of 50,000 tenements at 
a cost of £5,000,000, and a programme of land 
reclamation and of building expansion, not only 
in the city and the port areas, but in the neigh- 
bouring island of Salsette, destined to become 
the site of a Greater Bombay, was framed in co- 


1 Sir George Curtis, K.C.S.I., in a paper published in the * Journal 
of the Royal Society of Arts” of July 15, 1921. 
2 Ibid. 


156 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


operation with the municipality and the Improve- 
ment and Port Trusts at an estimated cost in all 
of £30,000,000. From which it will be seen that 
what man can do to overcome the one serious 
disadvantage with which Nature has penalised 
Bombay, will certainly be done. 

To the advantages conferred by its geo- 
graphical situation upon this great entrepot of 
commerce must be added the advantage which it 
derives from the composition of its inhabitants. 
Its population is essentially cosmopolitan, and is 
made up largely of the keenest trading races of 
Asia. The foreign-born element is higher here 
than in any other city in India, no less than 804 
per thousand. Amongst its great captains of 
industry the Parsis are prominent — refugees in 
days gone by from the hosts of Islam that over- 
ran Persia, and never handicapped, as has been so 
large a portion of the people of India proper, by 
caste restrictions. Jews there are, too, from 
Baghdad, Khojas from Cutch, and Banias and 
Bhattias from Gugerat. 

The situation in Calcutta is a very different 
one. Here, too, there is a large and flourishing 
textile industry. Congregated on the banks of 
the Hughli river are innumerable jute mills with 
something like 850,000 spindles and 40,000 looms, 
employing in all about 275,000 persons. It has 
been estimated that the total capital, including 
shares, debentures, reserve and other funds in- 
vested in the mills on the banks of the river, 
amounts to £80,000,000. But with scarcely an 
exception the mills are in the hands of Europeans. 
The fibre is grown nowhere else in the world—it 
is a practical monopoly of Bengal and Assam ; 
and for many generations the people of these 
countries had spun and woven it by hand. Yet 
the industry in its present form, apart from being 
carried on upon the soil of India and by means 


INDUSTRIALISM OF THE WEST 157 


of Indian labour, has no claim to Indian nation- 

“ality. It is palpably an exotic. It is, neverthe- 
less, an enterprise of great interest which merits 
description. 

The credit for first calling the attention of the 
Western world to this particular fibre rests with 
a Dr. Roxburgh, who in 1795 sent home to the 
Directors of the East India Company a bale of 
what he described as ‘‘ the jute of the natives.” 
This seems to be the first recorded use of the word 
jute, which is probably in origin an Anglicised 
rendering of the word pat of Eastern Bengal, 
sometimes pronounced jhat. Its preparation by 
hand appears to have been an almost universal 
occupation in the cottages of Eastern Bengal. 
According to a Calcutta merchant of those days, 
it pervaded all classes and penetrated into every 
household. Men, women, and children found 
occupation therein. ‘‘ Boatmen in their spare 
moments, husbandmen, palankeen carriers, and 
domestic servants; everybody, in fact, being 
Hindus, pass their leisure moments, distaff in 
hand, spinning gunny twist.” It enabled even 
the Hindu widow to pay her way instead of 
becoming a charge upon her family, for its pre- 
paration formed ‘the never-failing resource of 
that most humble, patient, and despised of created 
beings, saved by law from the pyre but condemned 
by opinion and custom for the remainder of her 
days, literally to sackcloth and ashes.” } 

It was not until 1829, however, that jute made 
its appearance in the Customs returns. In that 
year a consignment of 18 tons was exported, 
valued at £62. Its value was still doubtful, how- 
ever, and up to the year 1838 the flax and hemp 
spinners of Dundee found it advisable in their 


1 The merchant’s name was Henley. I am indebted to Mr. D. R. 
Wallace’s monograph, entitled “The Romance of Jute,’ for the 
quotation. 


158 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


market quotations to guarantee their products 
free from Indian jute.1_ In that year experiments 
met with some success, and exports were made in 
small quantities averaging by the middle of the 
century about 12,000 tons a year. 

With the outbreak of the Crimean War the 
supplies of flax and hemp from Russia were cut 
off, and jute was at once sought after as a sub- 
stitute, the amount exported annually during the 
years 1854-58 averaging over 35,500 tons. In 
1855 the first yarn spun by machine in India was 
turned out on the site of the present Wellington 
mills near Serampore, and four years later the 
first jute cloth woven on a power-loom made its 
appearance on the market. The next great im- 
petus which the jute industry was to receive came 
from another war, the American War of Secession, 
in 1861. Cotton was at that time still used 
widely for packing and wrapping purposes. At 
the outbreak of war in 1861 the price of “* middling 
Orleans”’ cotton was 94d. per lb.; by the middle 
of 1864 it was 2s. 7?d. per lb. The effect upon 
jute was immediate. For the five years ending 
1868 the exports of raw jute from India averaged 
131,405 tons a year, a figure which rose during 
the next five years to nearly 243,000 tons. Still 
the industry in India developed slowly, and up 
to the year 1870 comprised less than a thousand 
looms. It was the manufacturer in Dundee who 
shared with the cultivator in Bengal the benefits 
of the rapidly increasing demand. 

Successive wars, however, during the past fifty 
years—the Franco-German War of 1870, the 
South African War of 1899, the Russo-Japanese 
War of 1904, and finally the European War of 
1914—have given to the industry in Bengal the 
position of predominance which it occupies to-day. 
On the eve of the outbreak of war in 1914 the 

1D. R. Wallace, ‘* The Romance of Jute.”’ 


INDUSTRIALISM OF THE WEST 159 


mills in India were exporting every year not far 
~ short of 370,000,000 bags and 1,061,000,000 yards 
of cloth, having a total value of nearly £19,000,000. 
Three years later, when the War was at its height, 
these figures had jumped to 805,000,000 bags and 
1,230,000,000 yards of cloth, with a value of 
£2'7,750,000. Sand-bags were made in hundreds 
of millions. The Calcutta mills turned them out 
at the rate of 80,000,000 a month as long as they 
were required to do so. At one moment an order 
for 136,000,000 was received. I asked if this 
would embarrass the mills. Not at all; it would 
merely require the use of one-fifth of the looms of 
the city for a couple of months. The number of 
these bags supplied by the Calcutta mills to the 
allied armies between the autumn of 1915 and the 
same season in 1917 would have sufficed, allowing 
thirty-four bags filled with sand to the yard, to 
girdle the earth with a solid rampart six feet in 
height. The consumption of the Calcutta mills 
now averages over a million tons of raw jute and 
over a million tons of coal a year. 

And this activity in the jute industry gave a 
fillip to a number of subsidiary industries. The 
supply from abroad of such things as bobbins, 
plane tree-rollers, pickers, roller-skins, belting, 
and porcelain thread-guides was cut off, and their 
production in India became an imperious neces- 
sity. For example, the consumption of raw hide- 
pickers in the Bengal jute mills is approximately 
45,000 a month. Had their manufacture not 
been extemporised in India, the whirr and crash 
of 40,000 looms and 800,000 spindles would have 
died down; over a quarter of a million people 
would have been thrown out of work, and mills 
worth millions of pounds sterling would have lain 
idle. 

Other industries—notably the tea industry— 
found themselves cut off from their normal source 


160 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


of supply. Over 300,000,000 Ib. of tea are made 
in India every year; the value of the tea exported 
during the year before the War was little short of 
£10,000,000. Its consumption of Venesta tea- 
chests amounted to from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 
a year, and they came chiefly from Russia 
and Japan. Their manufacture was, therefore, 
organised in Bengal and Assam. And this new 
industry in its turn called for subsidiary industries 
such as lead mills and nail and rivet factories. 
Even here the end of the industrial chain had not 
been reached, for nails cannot be made without 
wire, and hitherto there had been no wire-drawing 
plant in India. 

Pruning knives and kindred implements are 
another essential requirement of the tea industry. 
In the year 1918 the first Indian pruning knife 
was made from Indian steel, the product of the 
Tata works. The consumption of such knives is 
estimated at 150,000 a year. 

These are but examples of some of the smaller 
industries brought into existence out of imperious 
necessity due to the War. Another major in- 
dustry that underwent rapid expansion was the 
production of iron and steel. The great Tata Iron 
and Steel Company had been formed in 1907, and 
the entire plant of the company had come into 
operation at Jamshedpur, on the borders of Bengal 
and Orissa, in 1912. It had scarcely more than 
started on its career, consequently, when its 
resources were subjected to a tremendous strain 
occasioned by the demands of war. Large ex- 
tensions were undertaken. New blast furnaces 
were put in hand and others planned. The 
future output of the company is expected to be 
1,000,000 tons of steel a year. An earlier enter- 
prise was that of the Bengal Iron Company at 
Kulti, founded in 1875; and a number of new- 
comers are now entering the field. The Indian 


INDUSTRIALISM OF THE WEST 161 


Iron and Steel Company are erecting works at 
~ Hirapur on a scale comparable with those of the 
Tata Company. At Ondal in the Raniganj dis- 
trict, a company entitled Indian Steels, Limited, 
is laying down electric furnaces for the production 
of steel suitable for tool and machine construc- 
tion; and at Rupnarainpur, the Kirtyanand Iron 
and Steel Company have erected plant for the 
production of steel castings on a large scale. 
And on a par with these are projects for the 
manufacture of jute-mill machinery, agricultural 
implements, tinplates, and, last but not least, 
sulphuric acid on a large scale in the environs of 
the existing Tata works at Jamshedpur. By the 
roadside, too, running from Calcutta to Barrack- 
pore may be seen newly erected buildings for 
the manufacture of machine tools for the Indian 
market. 

No greater impetus, then, could conceivably 
have been given to the industrial revolution of 
which Sir T. Morison wrote, than that which was 
quite unexpectedly given to it by the European 
War. Yet the industrialism of the West still 
remains to a large extent an exotic upon Indian 
soil. I am not likely easily to forget my first 
inspection of a Calcutta jute mill, for it was a fas- 
cinating experience. Twenty thousand spindles 
whirred unceasingly ; a thousand looms crashed 
inexorably. The thrumming of the engines, the 
whirr of the spindles, the crash of the looms, all 
these things denoted a gigantic and _ sleepless 
activity. The whole thing was a dramatic mani- 
festation of power. But its ownership and its 
organisation were not Indian but British. And 
the same thing applies to practically every 
jute mill in the country; and the statistics 
show that of the whole value of manufactured 
goods exported from India every year, jute 
manufactures are responsible for more than 

M 


162 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


half. The figures for 1920-21 are: jute manu- 
factures, £385,300,000; all other manufactures, 
£22,500,000. 

Other facts concerning the industrial revolu- 
tion point in the same direction. The works for the 
production of machine tools on the Barrackpore 
road are not Indian works: they are being put up 
by Messrs. Alfred Herbert. The great iron and 
steel works at Jamshedpur are the offspring of 
the great Parsi firm of Bombay—and Bombay, as 
already explained, is not typical of India proper 
in this respect. Similarly, the other large iron 
and steel works to which reference has been made 
are in the main European and not Indian enter- 
prises. Indian indifference to modern industrial- 
ism could hardly be better illustrated than by her 
apathy in the case of the leather industry. It 
would be difficult to imagine a country better 
situated for the production of leather than India. 
She possesses in almost unlimited quantities the 
two necessary ingredients, namely, hides and 
skins on the one hand and tanning materials on 
the other. By applying the one to the other she 
had it in her power to increase the value of each 
hide she sold by from four to five rupees. Yet 
with a prodigality which cannot be attributed to 
altruism, and which must, therefore, be set down 
to indifference, she exported them side by side in 
shiploads to other countries. In the year before 
the War she exported 1,632,000 cwt. of raw hides 
and skins, and 1,467,000 cwt. of dyeing and 
tanning stuffs. Comment upon these figures is 
altogether superfluous. Under the influence of 
war conditions a change came about. A research 
tannery subsidised by the State came into exist- 
ence, to be followed by the appearance of new 
tanneries and the reconstruction of others that 
were in existence. But the War was in a sense an 
artificial stimulant, and no development due to 


»* 





Plate 12, 


MARBLE CEILING OF A JAIN TEMPLE At Mount ABU. 


The industrialism of the West still remains to a large extent an exotic upon Indian sot 


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INDUSTRIALISM OF THE WEST 163 


it can alter the significance of the state of affairs 
sét forth above. 

With all these things in mind, I find it difficult 
to escape from the conclusion that the organisa- 
tion of industries on the lines evolved by Western 
nations—industries, that is to say, which require 
a huge array of machinery driven by mechanical 
power, steam, hydraulic, or electric, and which 
necessitate the aggregation of vast numbers of 
human beings to perform for a fixed wage so much 
of the operation as cannot be performed by the 
machine itself—is something which is altogether 
alien to the genius of the Indian people. Of 
course, there are modern industrial undertakings 
which are exclusively Indian, and I would not 
have it supposed that there are not Indians 
outside Bombay who possess the initiative, the 
technical skill, and the organising ability necessary 
for the successful running of such businesses. I 
recall half a dozen such enterprises which I have 
myself visited, and of which I can speak in the 
highest terms. But these are exceptional rather 
than typical, and their existence does not in- 
validate the general conclusion arrived at above— 
a conclusion which finds striking confirmation in 
the verdict of the Indian Industrial Commission 
of 1916-18 that “ the industrial system is unevenly 
and in most cases inadequately developed ; and 
the capitalists of the country, with a few notable 
exceptions, have till now left to other nations 
the work and the profit of manufacturing her 
valuable raw materials, or have allowed them to 
remain unutilised.’”’ Western industrialism is, 
indeed, regarded by a not inappreciable section 
of educated public opinion not merely with in- 
difference but with deep-rooted aversion. ‘* This 
one thing,” said Mr. C. R. Das, long before Mr. 
Gandhi launched his campaign against the civilisa- 
tion of the West, ‘‘ we must remember for ever, 


164 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


that this industrialism never was and never will 
be art and part of our nature. . . . If we seek to 
establish industrialism in our land, we shall be 
laying down with our hands the road to our de- 
struction. Mills and factories—like some gigantic 
monster—will crush out the little life that still 
feebly pulsates in our veins, and we shall whirl 
round with their huge wheels and be like some 
dead and soulless machine ourselves.”’ 

And the modern factory is as uncongenial to 
the Indian workman as is the industrial system to 
the educated Indian idealist. It sounds almost 
a paradox to say that in a country with a popula- 
tion of 320,000,000 the demand for factory labour 
is always in excess of the supply. Nevertheless, 
such is the case. And the key to the puzzle is 
provided by the census statistics, which show that 
90 per cent of the vast population of the continent 
is classed as rural. The significance of this figure 
becomes apparent when compared with the corre- 
sponding figure in a modern industrial State like 
Kngland and Wales, where the census of 1921 
showed that nearly 80 per cent of the people live in 
towns. This overwhelming preponderance of the 
rural population is not apparent to the visitor, who 
usually passes from town to town. But as one’s 
opportunities of travelling in country districts 
extend, one discovers the paramount part played 
by agriculture in the economy of the country. 
One soon realises that like Cain the Indian is a 
tiller of the ground, and one has little hesitation 
in deciding that he labours under the curse called 
forth by the behaviour of Adam. He eats of the 
herb of the field, and if appearances go for any- 
thing he does so in sorrow all the days of his life. 
Most assuredly does he eat bread in the sweat of 
his brow. Not that one should judge hastily 
by appearances. As has already been pointed 
out, the Indian is seldom given to displays of 


INDUSTRIALISM OF THE WEST 165 


_ hilarity, but is disposed by temperament towards 
solemnity. On the whole, he is probably far 
happier as a peasant than he will be as a member 
of an industrial proletariat if ever the hand-loom 
is completely ousted by the power-loom, and the 
factory casts its net wide over the countryside 
and sweeps its inhabitants into crowded towns as 
it has done in the West. 

At any rate, the worker in the factory and the 
mill is still a villager at heart. He does not 
settle down and make his home near the scene 
of his labour. He stays and works as long as 
necessity compels him, and then he departs— 
back to his village. In Bengal the workpeople 
are almost exclusively immigrants from other 
provinces, who retain their foreign domicile and 
reside in bachelor messes in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood of their work. The workman’s heart is 
not amidst the restless and tireless machinery 
alongside of which he toils, but away in the 
village where stands, however humble be the 
actual building, his deeply loved ancestral home. 
I have vivid recollections of travelling across the 
cotton country of the Central Provinces at the 
time of the gathering of the crop. The landscape 
wore the untidy appearance which is so marked 
a characteristic of the Indian countryside. In 
places the land was flat, in others crumpled. One 
crop straggled carelessly into the ground of its 
neighbour, and trees were scattered over the 
whole promiscuously and in disorder. What 
particularly attracted my attention, however, 
was the behaviour of the people. They were, if 
the employers of labour with whom I discussed 
the matter were to be believed, as inconsequent 
as their landscape. The call of the land at such 
a time became irresistible. Every one who could 
possibly do so migrated to the fields. A man 
ordinarily employed on the railway would return 


166 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


suddenly to his natural occupation— that of agri- 
culture—and until the crop was garnered the 
railway knew him no more. On all sides of me 
I saw collections of flimsy sheds of brushwood 
more preposterously untidy even than the rest— 
the temporary homes of those carried along on the 
tide of this strange migration from the workshop 
to the land. 

Some years later I had occasion to study a 
variety of official documents dealing with the 
question of the efficiency of Indian labour. ‘“* The 
most serious defect of Indian industrial labour,” 
I learned from one of them, “is that it is inter- 
mittent.’? And as I read on further that the 
worker was at heart an agriculturist, that he only 
worked at the factory in order to save sufficient 
money for some family festival or to tide over 
bad farming seasons, and that he almost always 
returned to his village at harvest time, the 
untidy landscape of the cotton country of the 
Central Provinces rose before my mind. The 
report which I was studying contained more 
details than I had picked up on the dusty land- 
scape. It averred that 10 per cent was a very 
low estimate of the number of absentees at any 
one time in any particular industry, and that 
during the harvest season staffs were sometimes 
reduced by as much as one-third. 

The Indian peasant is not, consequently, an 
efficient workman. Mills have now been in 
existence in Calcutta for nigh on seventy years ; 
but the number of hands required per loom is 
still much greater than in similar mills in Europe. 
The contrast is most marked, perhaps, in the 
mining industry. The coal seams in India and 
in the United States of America are of approxi- 
mately the same thickness. In the latter country 


1 Report on the conditions and prospects of British trade in India 
at the close of the War, by Mr. T. M. Ainscough, O.B.E. 


INDUSTRIALISM OF THE WEST 167 


the amount of coal produced per person employed 
above and below ground is roughly 800 tons a 
year. In India in 1920 it was just 100 tons. 
Some part of the difference is no doubt attribut- 
able to the greater use of labour-saving machinery 
in America; but much is accountable to the 
inefficiency of Indian labour. The Indian miner 
has eccentricities of his own which would scarcely 
be tolerated in Western lands. The Sonthali 
miner, for example, when he goes below ground 
takes with him not merely his pick and shovel, 
but his wife as well. He makes this, in fact, a 
condition of his going below ground at all. 

India has still a long way to go before the 
industrial revolution is accomplished, and many 
obstacles to overcome, not the least of which is 
the unwillingness of the greater number of her 
people to tread the industrial road. 


CHAPTER XIV 
WEALTH, ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL 


InpIA is actually a poor country according to 
Western standards, because her wealth is un- 
developed—because, in other words, the industrial 
revolution referred to in the last chapter has not 
yet taken place. A rough estimate of the average 
income per head of the population of India at 
the close of the nineteenth century was £3 a year. 
Calculations based on recent figures in the Pre- 
sidency of Madras give a higher figure to-day, 
namely, £10; but this increase is discounted to 
a great extent by the heavy fall in the purchasing 
power of the rupee. Taxation has increased 
appreciably in recent years, yet at the close of 
the War (1918-19) its incidence amounted only 
to a fraction more than 3s. 24d. per head, or, if 
land revenue be included, to a trifle more than 
4s. 94d. The meaning of these figures becomes 
clearer when compared with those of a highly 
industrialised country such as Great Britain, 
whose people are credited with an average 
income of £30 or £40, and who cheerfully pay 
taxes at the rate of £16: 12s. per head, or, if 
local taxation be included, at the rate of £21 
per head. 

A rapid survey of the two main factors 
necessary for the production of wealth—man- 


1 Figures for 1922-23. 
168 


WEALTH, ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL 169 


power and natural resources—-will satisfy one that, 
~ however poor a country India may appear to 
be to-day, she is a land of immense latent possi- 
bilities. The British flag flies over 13,250,000 
square miles of the dry surface of the globe. Of 
this vast area India claims 1,800,000 square 
miles, or something approaching one-seventh of 
the whole. But this seventh part of the British 
Kmpire possesses far more than an equivalent 
share of the Kmpire’s man-power. Of the esti- 
mated total population of 440,000,000, India 
claims no less than 820,000,000, a proportion 
which exceeds two-thirds of the whole. Figures 
have been given in Chapter I. which show that 
this vast human hive of workers is engaged, for 
the most part, in cultivating the land, and 
grounds have been given in the preceding chapter 
for concluding that for many years to come they 
will continue to be so. Indeed, no greater con- 
trast in occupation than that between the people 
of Great Britain and those of India could well 
be found. Whereas the former live in vast 
aggregations in huge towns, the latter live spread 
over the countryside in countless villages. In 
England and Wales, as I have already pointed 
out, 80 per cent of the population is returned 
as urban; in India 90 per cent is recorded as 
rural. Every year some 225,000,000 acres in 
British India bring forth crops of sugar, tea, and 
coffee; rice, wheat, barley, and other food 
grains; linseed, sesamum, rape, and other oil 
seeds ; cotton, jute, and other fibres; indigo, 
opium, and tobacco. In a single year?! these 
spreading acres have yielded 34,750,000 tons 
of cleaned rice; 10,250,000 tons of wheat; 
370,000,000 Ib. of tea; 4,500,000 400-lb. bales 
of cotton ; 8,300,000 bales of jute ; 500,000 tons 
of linseed; nearly 1,200,000 tons of rape and 
1 1916-17, taken at random. 


170 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


mustard; the same amount of ground-nut; and 
2,750,000 tons of raw sugar. 

Nor has this immense territory reached any- 
thing approaching its full development. The 
tiller of the soil in India is, to say the least, con- 
servative in his methods. With the aid of modern 
science the crops upon the land already cultivated 
can be enormously increased. Take an example. 
Bengal and Assam hold a practical monopoly in — 
the production of jute, the raw material of the 
gunny bags in which, year by year, are moved 
the harvests of the world. 

Much painstaking research on the part of the 
experts of the Agricultural Department, involving 
the scientific examination on Mendelian lines of 
innumerable varieties followed by cross-breeding, 
has resulted in the discovery of varieties of the 
plant which give a yield much in excess of those 
hitherto grown by the Indian peasant. A variety 
known as Kakya Bombai, giving on the average 
160 lb. of fibre more per acre than the local 
varieties, has been distributed amongst the 
villages of Eastern Bengal during the past few 
years, and by the year 1921 was being grown on 
an area of 200,000 acres. So successful was the 
crop, that it was estimated that the eventual 
increase in the yield of the plant on the jute lands 
of Bengal might easily amount to 400,000,000 
lb. of fibre, worth probably £2,750,000 sterling. 
Searcely had this estimate been made when a 
still more highly productive variety was dis- 
covered, giving on the average a yield of 80 lb. 
an acre more fibre than Kakya Bombaz itself. A 
similar story can be told of rice. Research pro- 
duced not long ago two varieties giving yields 
greater by some 250 lb. per acre than that of the 
local variety. In 1919 these two varieties were 
grown on 250,000 acres, with the result that the 
food supply on this area was increased by 


WEALTH, ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL 171 


60,000,000 Ib. of grain, worth £200,000. Re- 
~ search on these lines is still proceeding, and further 
success in this direction is practically assured. 
Be it remembered that round the head of the 
Bay of Bengal alone lie 20,000,000 acres of pro- 
ductive rice land, and some idea of the ultimate 
value of these discoveries can be formed. 

These are not the only ways in which the 
agricultural output is being increased. By means 
of irrigation vast tracts of land formerly desert 
are being brought under the plough. The Punjab 
provides a notable example. Here an arid waste 
has been transformed into a bounteous granary. 
Canal colonies have been plotted out, and nearly 
9,000,000 acres in the province have been brought 
under cultivation by irrigation works classed as 
productive, i.e. works capable within ten years 
of their construction of producing sufficient 
revenue to cover their working expenses and the 
interest charges on their capital cost. It was 
only when these great projects began to bear 
fruit that the North-Western State Railway — 
a system with nearly 4000 miles of track—began 
to pay. In British India as a whole 67,000 miles 
of canal irrigate 28,000,000 acres of land, the 
estimated value of the crops irrigated by Govern- 
ment works amounting to over £156,000,000 a 
year. Existing schemes are constantly being 
added to, and it is officially estimated that by 
the time that projects now under construction 
are in full working order, and assuming that a 
great scheme in Sind known as the Sukkur 
Barrage is carried through, the present irrigated 
area of 28,000,000 acres will have increased to 
40,000,000 acres.1_ All these things are sign-posts 
pointing the roads along which India is travelling 


1 This huge project, the greatest irrigation scheme in the world, was 
formally inaugurated by Sir George Lloyd, Governor of Bombay, in the 
autumn of 1923, when he laid the foundation stone of the great barrage 
at Sukkur which will henceforth bear his name. 


172. INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


towards a vastly increased production of raw 
material. 

Another large potential source of wealth are 
the forests, which cover over 250,000 square miles 
of territory. ‘These immense tracts are gradually 
being taken in hand; but the out-turn of timber 
and firewood at present amounts to only 2 cubic 
feet per acre, while the manufacture of paper 
pulp from such things as bamboo—of which there 
are vast quantities—has only recently been under- 
taken. A useful product of the forests is the 
fruit of certain trees widely distributed over the 
continent, to which the commercial name of 
myrobalan has been given. Its value is due to 
the tannin which it contains, and which renders 
it an important tanning agent. It is exported at 
the rate of from 40,000 to 60,000 tons a year. By 
a happy coincidence, the country which produces 
a tanning agent on so large a scale likewise pos- 
sesses In almost unexampled quantity material 
which, when tanned, becomes a commodity of 
universal consumption, namely, leather. 

No statistics are required to apprise any one 
who is familiar with the Indian landscape, whether 
in north or south or east or west, of the part 
played by the cow in the internal economy of the 
country. Let him call to memory any rural 
scene, and he will find it dominated by the bullock 
or the cow. A vast expanse stretches away in 
flat monotony to a distant horizon. Overhead, 
the sun steers its course across space More mono- 
tonous in its featureless uniformity even than the 
dusty plain below. A small cloud of dust rises 
from the ground. As it approaches it is accom- 
panied by the creaking and groaning of crude 
wooden wheels upon primitive wooden axles. 
The procession moves with the slow, unrhythmical 
motion which is peculiar to the draught bullock. 
The string of bullock-carts which emerges from 


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WEALTH, ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL 173 


its fog of dust is a thing of immemoriakantiquity 
and of universal distribution. You will see it 
threading its leisurely way along dusty country 
lanes, and you will also see it lumbering the 
streets of great cities—hauling bales of cotton to 
and from the mills of Bombay, and blocking the 
riverside streets of Calcutta. There is scarcely 
an operation in Indian agricultural life in which 
the cow does not play an essential part. It 
treads out the grain on countless threshing-floors ; 
it drags, with patient resignation, the archaic 
plough with which the Indian peasant turns over 
the soil of the continent; with a similar im- 
perturbable indifference it raises water to be 
poured over the thirsty land from innumerable 
wells, plodding out interminable circles as it turns 
the Persian water-wheel, or stamping out straight 
lines as it passes up and down the inclined ramp 
of the simple haulage variety. These things have 
been recalled in order to clothe the dry bones of 
statistics with flesh and blood. It was estimated 
by the Indian Industrial Commission that there 
were in India 180,000,000 head of cattle and 
87,000,000 sheep and goats; and in any case the 
export of hides and skins is not a matter of com- 
putation but of fact. The year before the War, 
the quantity of hides and skins exported was 
1,906,931 cwt., valued at £10,606,000. 

The mineral wealth of the continent is still more 
a matter for future development. The output of 
coal has increased fairly rapidly during the past 
few years, from 12,000,000 tons in 1910 to 
22,500,000 tons in 1919; and with the intro- 
duction of electrical cutting plant should continue 
to show expansion. In 1919 over 800,000,000 
gallons of petroleum were produced, mainly in 
Burma, and varying quantities of such minerals 
as manganese, wolfram, mica, saltpetre, and gold. 
More significant is the fact that recent surveys 


174 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


have disclosed the presence in the hills of Orissa 
of immense deposits of iron ore of unusually high 
grade. These discoveries include what appears to 
be a range of iron ore running almost continuously 
for forty miles, and rising to heights of from 2000 
to 8000 feet above sea-level. It has been asserted 
that at one place a ravine cutting across the 
iron-ore range shows a continuous thickness of 
700 feet of high-grade hematite containing over 
60 per cent of iron; and it has been esti- 
mated that in this one field alone there are 
2,800,000,000 tons of ore. And it requires but 
little imagination to perceive that, as time goes 
on, such deposits of iron must become a first-class 
imperial concern. 

It will be seen, then, that with the two factors 
of primary importance for the production of 
wealth—man-power and raw material—India is 
generously endowed. It has also been shown in 
the preceding chapter that in the task of convert- 
ing her potential wealth into actual riches she 
requires assistance from outside. Is she prepared 
to welcome the help of Great Britain in this work ? 
It is certainly not unnatural that, in view of the 
history of Great Britain in India, of the fact that 
the development of her resources which has so far 
taken place has been the work of British experts, 
British administrators, and British merchants, and 
that her trade has been built up in the main by 
British enterprise and financed by British capital, 
there should be a desire on the part of the people of 
Great Britain to see the commercial ties between 
the two countries strengthened. On the one 
hand, India has a surplus of the raw materials 
which Great Britain requires. On the other hand, 
the Indian market is even now of paramount 
importance to the people of Great Britain, for it 
absorbs nearly one-sixth of her total exports to 
the world. Its potential value depends upon the 


WEALTH, ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL 175 


future rise in the standard of living and the in- 
crease in the wealth of its 320,000,000 consumers ; 
and to its eventual possibilities, therefore, it is 
difficult to assign a limit. Can the trade between 
the two countries be fostered to their mutual 
benefit ? In other words, can India be included 
in any possible scheme for the commercial federa- 
tion of the British Empire ? 

The answer to these questions is not an easy 
one, for the case of India is far more difficult than 
that of the Dominions. Preferential tariffs in 
her case are possible, as I have shown elsewhere ; * 
but owing to the nature of her external trade, the 
scope for mutual assistance by this means is 
limited. Moreover, Indian public opinion is at 
present very far from accepting the principle 
enunciated by those who urge the formation of 
something in the nature of a British Zollverein, 
that “‘ wherever it is possible, the imports which 
are required by any part of the Empire from 
external sources should be obtained from within 
the Empire.” ? Her public men are profoundly 
suspicious of any proposals for the manipulation 
of her tariffs in the interests of imperial trade. 
And if we are to be quite frank with ourselves, we 
must admit that they are so not without cause. 
The story of the Indian cotton duties—first the 
omission of cotton goods from the general Indian 
import tariff of 1894, followed by the imposition 
of an equivalent excise duty upon the Indian 
cotton industry when, shortly afterwards, as a 
result of the storm of indignation which broke out 
in India, it was found expedient to abandon this 
invidious exception; and the further manipula- 
tion of the duties under pressure from Lancashire 
in 1896—has left behind it a legacy of bitter 


1 In an essay entitled ‘‘ India and Imperial Reciprocity,” included in 
‘** An Eastern Miscellany’: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1911. 

2 See, for example, an article by Professor Hewins in the “ Nine- 
teenth Century and After ’ for November 1922. 


176 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


memories. As we have sown, so are we now 
reaping. 

A temperate statement of the Indian attitude 
is to be found in the “* Indian Modern Review ” of 
October 1922, an admirably conducted periodical 
which voices the views of a large section of 
educated public opinion in India, which, with- 
out necessarily being extremist, is emphatically 
nationalist. After arguing that while Great 
Britain has certainly much to gain from pre- 
ferential relations between herself and India, 
the latter country stands only to lose by them, 
the writer touches upon the political aspect of the 
question. ‘‘ However striking the idea of an 
Imperial Zollverein may be to the imagination, it 
must remain an absurdity so long as the different 
countries remain separated, not merely by long 
distances, but by feelings and prejudices based on 
race, colour, and political status. So far as India 
is concerned, Imperial Preference is not a practical 
proposition at the present moment. The question 
rests largely on sentiment. But to appeal to 
Indian sentiment in the existing state of things 
in the country is to misread human nature.” 
And he concludes with this warning: “ Imperial 
Preference forced on the people under present 
circumstances is likely to make them regard it as 
another device invented for the further exploita- 
tion of the country. It would, indeed, be ex- 
tremely unwise to take a step which is calculated 
to embitter feelings and strengthen prejudices, 
and which may easily lead to disastrous con- 
sequences.” 

These are the words, not of the politician 
seeking popularity in an appeal to race prejudice, 
but of Dr. Pramathanath Banerji, Minto Pro- 
fessor of Economics at the Calcutta University. 
And the views which he expresses are to be found 
stated with equal emphasis in the report of the 


WEALTH, ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL 177 


Indian Fiscal Commission of 1922. The Com- 
“mission as a whole was impressed by ‘‘ the almost 
complete unanimity with which Indian witnesses 
opposed the principle of Imperial Preference ”’ ; 
while the explanation of this attitude on the part 
of the Indian public, put forward in a minute by 
the minority, is that it is due to “ India’s present 
political status in the Empire. The conclusion 
is therefore inevitable,’’ they add, “that this 
question can only become a matter of practical 
politics when the promised goal of responsible 
government is reached.’’! Indian opinion is 
not afraid of tariffs; quite the contrary. The 
men who are now qualifying in the legislative 
councils to take over the government of the 
country in the future—all those, in short, who 
have accepted the recent reform scheme as an 
instalment of responsible self - government and 
are classed compendiously as ‘‘ Moderates ’’ — 
are quite frankly Protectionists. They desire to 
see tariffs employed for the protection of Indian 
industries ; and that means protection against the 
competition of British goods, since Great Britain 
is by far the largest salesman in the Indian 
market. It must be taken, therefore, that a 
preferential tariff as between Great Britain and 
India is not, at the present time, a matter of 
practical politics ; and other means of developing 
trade between India and the rest of the Empire 
must be sought. 

The most effective course will be to see that 
the capital, the business acumen, and the science 
which India requires, and for long will continue to 
require, from outside for the development of her 


1 The Commission consisted of twelve members under the president- 
ship of Sir Ibrahim Rahimtoola, C.I.E. Of the five European members, 
one, Mr. J. M. Keynes, M.A., C.B., was unable to attend and took no 
part in the proceedings. The Minute of Dissent, amounting practically 
to a minority report, was signed by five of the seven Indian members, 
including the President. 


N 


178 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


resources are provided by Great Britain. The 
direction of the flow of trade is influenced by 
many things besides tariffs. A notable object- 
lesson is provided by the trade in Indian hides, 
which up to August 1914 was dominated by 
German interests. When war broke out we woke 
up to find that the export hide market of Calcutta 
was entirely in the hands of German firms or 
firms with German affinities, who were bound 
by trade arrangements to sell to the continent 
through a ring of German dealers at Hamburg and 
Bremen. In 1913-14 Germany alone took 35 per 
cent of India’s raw hides, and in the four months 
before the outbreak of war 39 per cent. As the 
War progressed, the importance to Great Britain 
- of the rough tanned cow-hides known as East 
India kips was realised, and from August 1916 the 
Government of India assumed complete control 
of the trade in the interests of the War Office, 
which took the whole available supply for use in 
the manufacture of boots for the British and allied 
armies. The quantity required by the Army for 
the “ uppers ” of its boots was estimated for the 
year 1917 to be a minimum of 80,000,000 feet ; 
and the quantity of tanned hides shipped from 
India rose from less than 200,000 ewt., valued at 
less than two crores of rupees the year before the 
War, to 365,000 cwt., valued at nearly five crores 
of rupees, in 1917-18. 

Conditions brought about by the War were 
of course abnormal, and permitted Government 
action of a kind that would scarcely be tolerated 
during times of peace. Indeed, with a gradual 
return to more normal conditions, the sentiment 
expressed by the phrase, “* India for the Indians,” 
has developed with great rapidity. Nor have we 
any ground of complaint on this score. It is 
perfectly natural that Indians should desire to 
develop their trade and their resources primarily 


WEALTH, ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL 179 


in the interests of their own people. And it be- 
hoves us to make it clear that in bringing to her 
aid our capital and our business skill, we are not 
animated by a selfish desire to exploit her to her 
own disadvantage. That it is to our own advan- 
tage that her resources should be developed by 
British rather than by foreign enterprise may 
be frankly admitted ; what we have to do is to 
prove to her, if we can, that it is equally to her 
advantage that this should be so. And if we are 
to do this, there must be no more episodes on a 
par with the Tariff Acts of 1894-96, to which 
reference has been made. 

Our task in this respect is not an easy one. 
The mere fact that British dominion in India 
arose out of the trading operations of a com- 
mercial corporation leads a certain school of 
Indian thought to look askance at the develop- 
ment of their resources and their industries by 
British merchants. There is indeed, as I have 
shown in the preceding chapter, a not inconsider- 
able section of Indian nationalists which takes the 
extreme view that Western industrialism is in 
itself an accursed thing, which at all costs must 
be denied access to the sacred soil of India. Mr. 
Gandhi is the most prominent exponent of this 
view. But he is not alone, as I have shown by 
quotations from the writings of Mr. C. R. Das 
and others. 

I have mentioned this because it is important 
that we should realise the complicated nature of 
the problem with which we have to deal. It may 
assist towards an appreciation of the difficulties if 
I now sum up briefly the conclusions which have 
to be deduced from what has been written above. 
Broadly speaking, they may be said to be as 
follows : 

(i.) That India is now a factor of supreme im- 
portance in the commerce of the Empire. 


180 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


(ii.) That as time goes on this importance is 
likely to increase to an incalculable extent. 

(iii.) That her public men are hostile to any tariff 
concessions to British trade. 

(iv.) That the wise course for Great Britain to 
pursue is to concentrate upon increasing 
India’s wealth by the development of her 
resources. 

(v.) That in seeking to provide India with 
capital, business skill, and scientific advice 
with this end in view, she has to take into 
account two tendencies at present preval- 
ent in India: that of the section of Indian 
public men which appreciates the advan- 
tages of industrial development, but is 
jealous of outside aid; and that of the 
idealists, who view with intense dislike the 
whole system of industrialism, which they 
regard as one of the worst products of the 
materialism of the West. 

The question of importance, then, is how far 
are these two tendencies likely to militate effect- 
ively against British enterprise in the develop- 
ment of Indian trade and industry ? The answer 
is, I think: not nearly so far as might prima facie 
be supposed. To deal with the former first. The 
extreme idealism of those who look askance 
at the civilisation—and particularly at the in- 
dustrialism—of the West is scarcely likely to 
prevail against the hard necessities of life. Mr. 
C. R. Das gave up an exceedingly lucrative prac- 
tice at the Bar in pursuance of the life of renuncia- 
tion which he preached. But neither he nor Mr. 
Gandhi found it practicable to give up the use of 
railways and motor-cars, against which the latter 
so fiercely inveighed. And a proposal put for- 
ward at the meeting of the Indian National Con- 
eress in December 1922 for the boycott of British 
goods was rejected as impracticable. Then with 


WEALTH, ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL 181 


regard to Indian jealousy of external aid in the 
~ development of her resources. The hard facts of 
the position have been explained in the preceding 
chapter. And however strong may be the desire 
of Indian industrial magnates to see Indian re- 
sources developed by Indian agency, they know, 
when it comes to a practical business proposition, 
the value of outside aid. A visitor to Jamshed- 
pur, the great Tata industrial city on the borders 
of Bengal and Orissa, noted not long ago that not 
more than three or four Indians had gained a 
footing among the upper thirty who formed the 
management of this vast enterprise. The rest 
were English, Scotch, and American. It must 
be for the good of India that her wealth should be 
increased ; and since outside aid is necessary to 
this end, what has to be done is to make it clear 
to India that the aid which Great Britain can offer 
her is given to the mutual advantage of the two 
countries; that if British business men look to 
receive a reasonable return themselves, they have 
no desire to deprive her of her legitimate share of 
the total profit. In other words, that what they 
desire to do is not to exploit her to her disadvan- 
tage, but to co-operate with her in a business of 
mutual benefit. 

The question is really one in which sentiment 
plays a paramount part. India has reached a 
stage of political growth when, having acquired 
a share in the control of the government of the 
country, she is thrusting out her hands to grasp 
the whole. While the dangers of too precipitate 
a leap from the stage of partial to that of complete 
indigenous control are staringly apparent to all 
who are familiar with conditions prevailing in 
India, no surprise need be felt at the sensitiveness 
of the intelligentzia of the country in the matter of 
foreign—which in this case means British—inter- 

1 See the ‘*‘ Manchester Guardian ”’ for January 13, 1928. 


182 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


ference. India’s awakened national conscious- 
ness insists that acquiescence on the part of her 
public men in the continued exercise of control 
by men of another race, whether in the sphere of 
administration or in any other field, is tantamount 
to an admission of their own inferiority. Need 
it, then, cause us surprise if such acquiescence is, 
for the most part, not forthcoming’? Or that 
where it is, it is but grudgingly given? And 
while we may be convinced in all sincerity that 
in the interests of India herself the guiding hand 
of Great Britain must remain for some time yet, 
we may at least try to banish from the mind of 
a proud and sensitive people the idea that on 
this account we harbour towards them feelings 
of contempt. 

As a people, we have been all too prone to pass 
by with insular indifference India’s contributions 
to the progress of the human race, not perhaps 
because of any deliberately formed conclusion 
that these were not worthy of our interest or our 
admiration, but because in India the performance 
of the task immediately to our hand has absorbed 
the whole of our energies and attention. Let us 
lift our gaze from the ground immediately beneath 
our feet, and at least attempt to pierce through 
the veil which our own distinctive outlook upon 
the universe tends to draw across the achieve- 
ments of another race ; and let us pay our tribute 
to the upward-aspiring spirit which inspires the 
great masterpieces in her literature and her art. 
Let us, above all, render homage to the lofty 
spiritual ideals which have marked her progress 
as, along with the other civilised races of the 
world, she has struggled forward up the steep 
ascent by which humanity, with halting steps, has 
groped its way from that long and brooding night 
of barbarism which lies behind the first faint light 
of civilisation’s dawn. 





Plate 14. 


THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF INDIA. 


‘¢ and let us pay our tribute to the upward aspiring spirit that inspired the great 
masterpieces of her literature and her art.” 





WEALTH, ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL 183 


It may be that not until India has attained 
‘full self-government—as Professor Pramathanath 
Banerji and the signatories to the minority report 
of the Indian Fiscal Commission hold—will such 
a community of interests spring up between her 
and the other units of the British Empire as will 
lead her spontaneously to become a contracting 
party in some scheme of Imperial federation. 
But much in the meantime may assuredly be done 
to bridge the yawning gulf which, to the detri- 
ment of both, has opened in recent years between 
the Indian and the British peoples. 


CHAPTER XV 
THE LURE OF THE PRIMITIVE 


NEARLY one-quarter of the whole surface of 
British India is under forest of one sort or another. 
Centuries back, when the early Aryan immigrants 
were making their way from Central Asia into 
the hospitable tracts of the Ganges valley, the 
forest may well have been spread over the greater 
part of the land. There is at any rate a school 
of thought in India which assigns to it a para- 
mount part in shaping the intellectual outlook of 
the Indo-Aryan race. 

The argument runs in this wise. The physical 
surroundings of primitive man have played an 
important part in determining his outlook upon 
the universe. Thus the sea has exercised a 
supreme influence upon the races dwelling in 
Northern Europe. To the men living on the 
island shores of countries like Great Britain it 
was the sea that stood for Nature—a thing of 
rugged power hurling a perpetual challenge to 
man, a thing to be fought and overcome, sub- 
dued and brought under the dominion of man. 
And man accepted the challenge and fought the 
elements and prevailed against them. But his 
very victory was proof of the existence of a gulf 
between him and Nature—of a spirit of antagon- 
ism between them. “ He looked upon his place 

184 


THE LURE OF THE PRIMITIVE 185 


in the world as extorted from a hostile scheme of 
things, retained in the teeth of opposition.” ! 

In the same way, it is argued, the forest exer- 
cised an abiding influence upon the people of 
India. Here Nature manifested herself in a 
garment of friendship, not in the armour of one 
girt up for battle. The forest offered no challenge 
to man; it extended rather an invitation to 
him. It gave him “ shelter and shade, fruit and 
flower, fodder and fuel.’?? He dwelt in the 
midst of Nature, and he found his own life in 
harmony with the life which pulsated rhythmic- 
ally around him. He became conscious of being 
an integral part of one great life principle which 
permeated all things, and such a thought as 
that of man being hostile to, or even distinct 
from, the rest of Nature never took shape in his 
mind. 

The different directions thus given by environ- 
ment to the thought of the progenitors of the 
peoples of Europe and of India are held responsible 
for the divergent attitudes of mind of East and 
West towards the problems of the universe. 
Man, regarding himself as something distinct from 
the rest of Nature, conceived of the world either 
as having been built by a Divine Mechanic or 
as being the outcome of a chance combination 
of blind forces. His attitude of mind towards 
such a world was naturally utilitarian. The 
world with which he found himself faced was 
there to be made the most of; to be used, and so 
far as possible fashioned, to his advantage. And 
dominated by this conception he devoted his 
energies to acquiring control over Nature. He 
became an efficient mechanic, and his outlook 
necessarily tended to become materialistic. 


1 ** The Message of the Forest,” by Sir R. Tagore, published in the 
** Modern Review ”’ for May 1919. 
* Ibid. 


186 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


On the other hand, man, regarding himself as 
one with Nature, was not assailed by such ideas 
as the conquest of Nature. To such an one the 
universe was not something apart; not the 
creation of a Divine Master Builder. Rather 
was the earth, and man himself, as one with 
Nature, a particular manifestation of the Divine 
itself. And the attitude of mind of such a man 
towards the universe was anything but utilitarian ; 
on the contrary, it tended towards extreme ideal- 
ism. And, in the view of the apostles of this 
school of thought, this conception of the universe 
‘“‘as the manifestation of the Supreme Soul, whose 
nature is to realise his unity in the endlessness of 
the varied,” has come to India from the great 
peace of its ancient forests. 

It is undoubtedly the case that the forest 
forms the background of many a picture of 
ancient Indian life. An important branch of 
early Vedic religious literature bears the name 
of Aranyaka, or “ forest treatises,’? works of an 
allegorical and mystical character leading up to 
the philosophical speculations of the Upanishads. 
These works were to be studied in the forest, in 
particular, as some modern scholars hold, by the 
various orders of ascetics that came into existence 
in early Vedic times. As time went on, the word 
vanaprastha—forest-dweller—came into use as a 
name for such ascetics; and later still there came 
into existence the classic division of life applicable 
to all members of the three higher, or twice-born 
classes, into four distinct stages, those of student- 
ship, of married life, of retirement in the forest, 
and, finally, of complete severance from the 
world. Of these four stages into which the lives 
of the twice-born were divided according to the 
institutes of Manu, it was definitely laid down 
that the third, after the functions of a house- 

1 ** The Message of the Forest.’’ 





Plate 5. 


THE INDIAN FOREST. 


“The forest forms the background of many a picture of ancient Indian life. 


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THE LURE OF THE PRIMITIVE 187 


holder had been duly discharged, was to be spent 
in the forest. ‘‘ When a householder sees his 
skin wrinkled, and his hair white, and the sons 
of his sons, then he may resort to the forest.” } 
Here he was required to live the life of a hermit, 
‘* without a house, wholly silent, subsisting on 
roots and fruit ... dwelling at the roots of 
trees.” And in order “ to attain complete union 
with the Supreme Soul,” the hermit “ who dwells 
in the forest’? must study the various sacred 
texts contained in the Upanishads.? The forest 
likewise provides a frequent setting for the 
episodes narrated in the great epics; in the 
forest, too, in the words of Tagore, “‘ the most 
intense pathos of human life found its background 
in the greatest of our romantic dramas.” ® 

The theory briefly set forth above is one of 
much attractiveness. The picture of the forest 
extending its hospitality to man—its portrayal 
as an abode of eternal peace, as a welcome haven 
from the storms of life to which men retired 
to meditate upon the profound and puzzling 
problems which forced themselves upon the 
acutest minds of a highly cultured race—possesses 
a strong appeal. But it does not accord with 
conditions at the present day. The forest of the 
present day is too often the haunt of the beast 
of prey. The tiger and the panther from their 
abode in its sombre depths war against man. 
They harry his cattle, and they prey even upon 
man himself. The crocodile takes his toll of 
human life, as also do numerous tribes of poisonous 
snakes. So disastrous is their onslaught that the 
State offers rewards for their destruction. In a 
recent year—1921—over 200,000 rupees were paid 
in such rewards, the destruction of nearly 25,000 
beasts of prey and 57,000 snakes being registered 


1 ** The Laws of Manu.” 2 Ibid. 
3 ** The Message of the Forest.” 


188 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


within the confines of British India. The victory 
was anything but a bloodless one, for man in his 
turn lost nearly 23,000 lives—over 19,000 from 
snake-bite and 38360 from the attacks of wild 
animals. 

Nor can it be said that the forest to-day is the 
hermitage of any cultured section of the people. 
It is the haunt, rather, of excessively primitive 
aboriginal tribes, of which the Bhils and the Kohls 
of Central India and the Central Provinces may 
be taken as examples. Far from these denizens 
of the forest occupying themselves with profound 
metaphysical speculation, they live in constant 
dread of a shadowy crowd of powerful and 
malevolent beings, the inhabitants of an unseen 
world, but one, nevertheless, which is ever present 
in their midst and whose activities interfere 
constantly with the lives of men. By such folk 
the malaria-carrying mosquito which abounds in 
forest-lands would be regarded, if indeed it was 
understood that she was the cause of fever, as 
the agent of some malignant being of this shadowy 
and generally hostile world. 

The normal occupation of such tribes consists 
of hunting, fishing, the collection of forest pro- 
ducts, and a certain measure of shifting cultiva- 
tion. Their weapon of offence is the bow and 
arrow. Some reprehensible primitive practices 
survive among many such aboriginal tribes, while 
others have only been discarded in comparatively 
recent times under the civilising influence of Great 
Britain. Dr. Edgar Thurston, writing of the 
practice of female infanticide prevalent among 
the Kondhs of Ganjam and Orissa until the 
middle of last century, declares that they main- 
tained that the Sun God, in contemplating the 
deplorable results produced by the creation of 
feminine nature, charged men to bring up only 
as many females as they could restrain from 


THE LURE OF THE PRIMITIVE 189 


producing evil to society... And the same writer, 
commenting upon the deep-rooted nature of the 
belief in the efficacy of human sacrifice, reminds 
us that as recently as 1907 the district magistrate 
of Ganjam received a petition requesting him to 
sanction the performance of the rite. 

Here, then, is ample material to intrigue the 
student of ethnology. Not all men, however, 
are ethnologists, and even for those who are not, 
the forest possesses a curious charm. If analysed, 
the appeal which it makes to civilised man would 
be found, as often as not, to be due to the idea 
of elemental simplicity for which it stands. It 
provides so fine a foil to the complexity of life 
in great cities. And there are times when the 
burden of civilisation is suddenly felt to be too 
heavy and the lure of the primitive becomes 
irresistible. Rousseau and Tolstoy both found 
it so. 

It is easy enough to paint imaginary pictures 
of the jungle which from this point of view possess 
a singular attraction. Its exuberance in tropical 
and semi-tropical zones seems to tell of the large 
warm-heartedness of Nature. I recall an area of 
over four hundred square miles in the low hills 
away on the shadowy borderland beyond Bengal, 
where immense bamboos grow like weeds in 
Nature’s garden, clustered together ten thousand 
to the acre. Here, surely, life could expand, away 
beyond the cramping influence of brick walls and 
slate roofs. Deep in this untamed wilderness of 
orchids and bamboos the heart of Nature must 
pulse joyously. Of its elemental simplicity there 
is no question. Man is born here, lives here, dies 
here, knowing nothing of the man-made world of 
which the twentieth century is so proud—the 
world of bricks and mortar, and of Nature’s 


1 See an article in a collection reprinted from the ‘“‘ Times ” of May 
24, 1911, under the title of ‘* India and the Durbar.” 


1909 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


energy trapped and cunningly harnessed in divers 
ways to do for man a thousand and one things 
beyond the comprehension of the forest-man. 
Where the products of this unfamiliar world have 
been thrust uninvited into his primitive universe 
his tendency is to ignore them. Railways, for 
example. I remember travelling over the hill 
section of the Assam-Bengal railway. That we 
might better enjoy the scenery a narrow platform 
had been rigged up over the cow-catcher on the 
engine. We were steaming along at twenty miles 
an hour, winding amongst hills buried in densest 
jungle of vivid green, our steepest gradient 1 in 37. 
Suddenly the man on my right shouted. Simul- 
taneously the man on my left burst into a cry 
and violently waved a small red flag which he 
carried. We were rounding a curve, and the 
black mouth of a tunnel loomed up a hundred 
yards in front of us. But it was an object 
between us and the tunnel on which I suddenly 
found my gaze riveted. Sleeping peacefully, his 
head pillowed on one rail and his feet across the 
other, lay a man. On we came inexorably. 
Nothing, it seemed, could prevent his being 
guillotined, and nothing could make me take my 
eyes off his prostrate form. In the nick of time, 
just when it seemed that we must be the reluctant 
witnesses of a gruesome tragedy, he wakened and 
flung himself off the line. Some day, I suppose, 
these folk will learn that the railway embankment 
was not thrown up for them to sleep on; but 
that day, as the railway officials know from sad 
experience, is not yet. Man here is still an 
elemental being, strangely unsophisticated, amaz- 
ingly ignorant of the intricate mechanism which 
other branches of the species have evolved and 
with which they delight to elaborate life. 

Yet the primitiveness of the jungle, so attract- 
ive in theory to the city man, jaded in spirit with 


THE LURE OF THE PRIMITIVE 191 


the artificiality and complexity of modern life, 
has certain less pleasing features which do not 
obtrude themselves in the picture which he 
conjures up. Its emotions are elemental. And 
dominant amongst elemental emotions is fear. A 
man who knew the jungle once painted it as it 
really is, a place dark and brooding, “ its shadows 
full of living things moving silently, themselves 
like shadows, between the trees, slinking under 
the bushes and peering through the leaves.” 
Dispassionately he set forth the elemental im- 
pulses by which life in the jungle is actuated. 
“The rule of the jungle is first fear and then 
hunger and thirst. There is fear everywhere : 
in the silence and in the shrill and the wild cries; 
in the stir of the leaves and the grating of 
branches; in the gloom; in the startled, slinking, 
peering beasts. And behind the fear is always 
the hunger and the thirst, and behind the hunger 
and the thirst fear again.”? The hard struggle for 
existence which drives the man of the cities pro- 
testing to his daily toil is there in the forest also. 
It is there in its elemental form—in that form 
which displays Nature red in tooth and claw. 
* The herd of deer must come down to drink at 
the water-hole. They come down driven by their 
thirst, very silently through the deep shadows of 
the trees to the water lying white under the moon. 
They glide like shadows out of the shadows, into 
the moonlight, hesitating, tiptoeing, throwing 
up their heads to stare again into the darkness, 
leaping back only to be goaded on again by their 
thirst, ears twitching to catch a sound, and nostrils 
quivering to catch a scent of danger. And when 
the black muzzles go down into the water it is 
only fora moment; and then with a rush the herd 
scatters back again terror-stricken into the dark- 
ness. And behind the herd comes the leopard, 
slinking through the undergrowth. Whom has 


192 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


he to fear? Yet there is fear in his eyes and in 
his slinking feet, fear in his pricked ears and in 
the bound with which he vanishes into the 
shadows at the least suspicious sound.” 1 Yes, 
the burden of existence is not confined to civilised 
life. It is there in the jungle also—in its most 
elemental form. 

And when men, wearied of the burden of 
civilisation, suecumb too completely to the lure of 
the primitive, this truth is startlingly revealed. 
For a return to elemental life means also a return 
sooner or later to elemental emotions in all their 
crudity, and a rejection of the checks which 
civilisation imposes upon them. Those who are 
incapable of bearing the burden of civilisation will, 
if they can, wage war against it. That is why 
men of distorted genius who succumb to the lure 
of the primitive become a danger to society. It 
would be easy to write much on this subject, but 
the story can be read elsewhere—in the history of 
the French Revolution, the seeds of which were 
sown by the teaching of Rousseau ; more recently 
still in the history of Russia, traced back to the 
teaching of Tolstoy. But if man, jaded with the 
unremitting toil of his days, does not take the lure 
of the primitive too seriously—as seriously as 
Rousseau or Tolstoy or Gandhi—he may cast 
aside the burden of civilisation for a space without 
harm to himself or others, and may find refresh- 
ment for mind and body in the Indian forest. 
Armed with rod and rifle he may make sport of 
the elemental emotions which give to the life of 
the denizens of the jungle alike its savage joys 
and its poignant bitterness. Let the brief record 
of a personal experience serve as an illustration. 


1“ The Village in the Jungle,” by Mr. L. S. Woolf. 


CHAPTER XVI 
JUNGLE LIFE 


WE had travelled all day over the Indian plain 
in a bone-shaking rattlebox of a motor car, with 
the brilliant sunshine of the Indian winter beating 
down upon us and the all-pervasive dust of the 
dry season heavy in our nostrils. The track 
which we followed, such as it was, was not always 
plainly discernible; but our pilot drove with a 
courage and a sublime faith derived from an 
unquestioning fatalism, and towards sundown we 
forged our way into a region of rolling hills and 
scattered jungle, and from the summit of a long 
swell of rising ground, looked down upon the waters 
of a broad river flowing in turbid volume athwart 
our course. There is, fortunately, a limit to the 
faith of even the most bigoted fatalist, and the 
river proved the limit in this case. We pulled 
up. A more primitive form of conveyance was 
called for to compete with the conditions pre- 
valent in the more primitive world which we were 
about to enter, and it was there awaiting us in 
the shape of two or three elephants, on whose 
broad backs we passed dry-shod over the river. 
On the far side, beneath the shelter of some 
splendid forest trees, we found a comfortable 
camp ready for us. 

We had 900 square miles of forest at our 
disposal—magnificent, riotous jungle where the 
tiger roamed at large, the panther preyed, the 

193 O 


194 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


pretty little cheetul deer browsed, and where at 
nights the jackal bayed the moon with mournful, 
blood-curdling yowl. It was December and all 
was now green—mile upon mile of the big-leafed 
sal, ebony, aura, wide-spreading banyans, and 
clumps of giant bamboo. Later on, when the 
hot breath of summer began stirring among the 
branches, the gorgeous ‘* Flame of the Forest ” 
would burst into flower, and the jungle for miles 
round would become a sea of vivid scarlet. 

I happened to revisit the district a year later 
in the month of April. Famine threatened the 
land, and those in authority were already specu- 
lating on the flowering of the mowha tree, and 
looking to it to make good in some measure the 
deficiency in grain. The thermometer rose daily 
to 100° Fahrenheit in the shade, and the white man 
perspired and tossed uneasily during the heat of 
the day beneath the double awning of his tents, 
and went abroad only during the freshness of early 
morning and the comparative cool of the evening. 
The forest in those days was beautiful; but it 
was also full of discomfort. I have vivid recollec- 
tions of a long night vigil. A panther had killed 
a goat on the edge of a small clearing inter- 
mittently cultivated by the members of an 
aboriginal tribe. I rode out from camp twelve 
miles on a pad-elephant—a journey of incom- 
parable weariness and discomfort—and towards 
sunset climbed into a tree above the body of the 
dead goat. Movement was forbidden and cramp 
inevitable; but the hope of success banished in- 
decision, and I determined to see it out. The sun 
sank and the short Indian twilight descended with 
a curious hush upon the land. Out of this silence 
the strange noises of the jungle gradually emerged. 
Mosquitoes—clouds of them—buzzed and bit 
fiercely and_ relentlessly. Pea-fowl strutted 
pompously to the water of a neighbouring pool, 


JUNGLE LIFE 195 


making an absurd bustle as they went. Parrots 
swooped from tree to tree. Suddenly, just as 
dusk was deepening into dark, the blurred outline 
of a ghostly form appeared for a moment in the 
undergrowth twenty yards away. Its coming 
was marked by a death-like silence, and then, 
altogether unexpectedly, there broke out on all 
sides a wild chorus of jabbered objurgation. The 
branches above my head were violently jerked 
and shaken; heavy bodies seemed to be hurling 
themselves from tree to tree, and night was made 
hideous with screechings and splutterings as of 
inexpressible rage. It was as though some phan- 
tom troop of wild cats had been let loose by some 
malignant being of the unseen world. But of 
course it was not cats; it was monkeys. 

For an hour or more they chattered and danced 
and jibbered, exhibiting the fierce hatred of their 
kind for the hereditary enemy that preyed upon 
them. As for me, I knew that for the time being 
hope was dead. I stretched my cramped limbs 
and scratched my bitten hands and neck until I 
was nearly mad with the irritation. But at last 
silence came once more, this time the heavy 
silence of full night. A faint light from the moon 
trickled through the branches, but not sufficient 
to give more than a blurred outline to the objects 
close by. I was at tension once more, and 
strained my eyes to the farthest visible distance. 
Yet when the panther did put in an appearance 
again I never saw him come. His movements 
were absolutely noiseless, and my first knowledge 
of his presence was when I became aware of a dim 
form actually on top of the goat’s body. He was 
so close that 1t would have been difficult to miss, 
and I shot him and carried him back in triumph 
—twelve miles in the dark on my protesting pad- 
elephant. 

This, however, is a digression. During these 


196 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


golden December days life in the forest was pure 
joy. We camped where we would, moving 
through the forest along shady tracks on foot or 
on the backs of elephants as we pleased, the im- 
pedimenta of our camp carried by camels. Our 
marches through the forest were always full of 
interest. There was great variety of both plant 
and animal life. Monkeys grimaced humorously 
at us, and a flash of brilliant turquoise through 
the air marked the flight of the beautiful blue jay. 
Here and there we came across sinister cairns of 
stone, marking the spot where at some time or 
other man had fallen a victim to the blood-lust of 
the tiger, grim reminders that the forest has its — 
hostile moods. Two such monuments we passed 
during the first day’s march. It is on record 
among the statistical returns issued by the 
Government of India that during that year 767 
persons were killed by tigers. And the cattle 
upon which man—at any rate, Indian man— 
depends so greatly suffered even more, over 
26,000 head of cattle having been reported slain 
by tigers during the twelve months. Any one 
who knows what the cow is to the Indian will 
understand the tragedy of that. Nor are tigers 
the only foe. I once found my rifle-bearer busy 
with a crocodile that I had shot. He was ab- 
sorbed in what seemed to me to be a somewhat 
meticulous examination of the contents of its 
stomach. But his interest was justified. After 
fishing out a handful of pebbles, he extracted a 
copper anklet, the erstwhile adornment, it is to 
be feared, of some unfortunate peasant girl. The 
figures for the year showed a total mortality due to 
wild beasts of all kinds, including snakes, of 26,242 
people and 102,240 head of cattle. Certainly the 
forest has its cruel moods. 

It was some days before we got to grips with 
tiger; but in the meantime there was plenty of 


JUNGLE LIFE 197 


other game to tempt us into the shady depths of 
the forest. Panther, pig, black bear, and the 
lordly sambhur stag, besides other varieties of 
deer, were brought to bag, and the pot was re- 
plenished as often as necessary with teal, pea- 
fowl, partridge, quail, and snipe. 

Early in January we were back on the banks 
of the river some miles below our first camp. We 
were just about to cross one morning to beat the 
jungle on the other side for deer, when the silver- 
toned tinkle of a camel bell became audible, and 
a moment later camel and rider hove into sight. 
In a moment the camp was all astir. The news 
passed rapidly from mouth to mouth; a buffalo 
had been killed by tiger ten miles away to the 
south. Everything moved like clockwork. A 
few sharp orders were given; the rifle-bearers 
were recalled ; the elephants were geared up, and 
by 11.80 we were off, travelling down the right 
bank of the river. Five miles down we saw a re- 
markable sight—forty or fifty crocodiles, mostly 
of huge dimensions, some running to seventeen feet 
in length, according to the reckoning of the expert 
of the party, lying on a sand-bank basking in the 
sun. We had no time to waste on them, however, 
and we pushed on, turning inland away from the 
river into thicker jungle. By 2 p.m. we reached 
the neighbourhood of the “ kill,’ and found an 
army of tribesmen assembled with gongs and 
tom-toms and pikes and staves, all thirsting for 
the fray. Our dispositions were quickly made, 
and as soon as we were posted the beaters formed 
line a mile or two away and started driving the 
jungle towards us. 

I was in a tree commanding a narrow ravine. 
The ground immediately in front of me was parti- 
ally clear—low scrub jungle with patches of rank 
grass and trees dotted here and there. Fifty 
yards away the forest closed in, strictly limiting 


198 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


my field of vision. Posted high up among the 
branches of large timber trees, I could make out 
here and there the dusky forms of the “ stops ”’ 
in two lines converging towards me on either side. 

It is an exciting thing waiting for a tiger, and 
one experiences a variety of sensations: depression 
at one moment at the thought that he may not 
after all be there; high tension at the next, in 
anticipation of what at any moment may occur. 
Those versed in forest lore knew that he was there, 
for the behaviour of the ravens told them all that 
they required to know. My swarthy rifle-bearer 
knew well enough; but he was not by nature 
communicative, and I spent forty minutes of 
crowded emotion before my doubts were finally 
laid to rest by a hoarse roar in the vicinity of some 
thick clumps of bamboos on my right front. For 
a moment there was violent commotion. The 
‘‘ stops ’”’ broke into volleys of untranslatable in- 
vective touching the ancestors of the tiger for 
many generations back, the bamboos rustled 
significantly, and then silence again. Five 
minutes or thereabouts elapsed before the drowsy 
hush of the jungle at high noon was broken again, 
this time on my left. Still there was nothing to 
be seen, and my wrist-watch slowly ticked off 
another four minutes from eternity. The ten- 
sion was becoming almost unbearable, when for a 
third time there came a sullen roar from the dense 
erowth almost immediately in front of me. After 
this a great many things happened in an infinitely 
short space of time. A large striped body loped 
with powerful feline movement across my left 
front—not a nice, clear-cut target, but a body in 
rapid motion, partially hidden by long rank grass. 
I emptied both barrels at it, and it disappeared 
from view in a thorn thicket. My attendant 
stuffed cartridges into my hand and pointed at 
the thorn bushes. I heard, with huge relief, a 


JUNGLE LIFE 199 


savage groan, and shifted my position until I 


~ caught sight of a writhing mass of striped fur 


glinting in the sunlight through the obstructing 
leaves of a sal tree. Taking chances with 
wounded tigers does not pay, and I fired another 
two barrels to make sure. In due course we 
descended from our leafy perches, the beaters 
came up singing paeans of victory over the van- 
quished foe, and the tiger was hoisted on to an 
elephant and carried in triumph back to camp. 
There he was measured with much ceremony— 
9 feet 5 inches from nose to tip of tail. 

The forest of which I have been writing lies 
for the most part south of the Sone river; south, 
too, therefore, of the rich plain of the sacred 
Ganges, where dwelt those Aryan settlers of 
whose life in the forest we read in the Indian epics 
and sacred books. Forest still bounds this land 
on the north, cutting off the cultivated plain from 
the towering parapets of the Himalaya. ‘This 
forest, too, at the present day is on the whole 
hostile to man. Under the general name of 
Terai, it extends for hundreds of miles along the 
foot of the Himalayas, the haunt of tiger, rhino- 
ceros, elephant, panther and other game, and 
—more dangerous still—the fever-carrying mos- 
quito. Like the forest elsewhere, it has seasons 
of great beauty. Its dense greens are lit up in 
early spring by the crimson and scarlet blossom 
of numerous flowering trees, the cotton tree, the 
** Flame of the Forest,’’ and a beautiful tree, the 
Erythrina indica, known locally in parts of 
the Terai as Madar, and often called by Kuropeans 
the Indian coral tree. 

Great tracts thickly overgrown with timber 
trees alternate with stretches of pampas grass 
from fifteen to twenty feet in height, through 
which it is impossible to force one’s way except on 
the back of an elephant. For which reason the 


200 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


tiger and all other forms of game are shot here 
from an elephant howdah. A line of forty or 
fifty elephants will beat a tract of jungle up to the 
guns waiting on other elephants. Thus posted, 
one may study with interest the life of the jungle 
as it surges round one. Wild fowl rush to and 
fro in the undergrowth. A lordly peacock sails 
overhead. The russet back of a crow-pheasant 
glints in the sunlight. Pretty green parrots shoot 
across one’s field of vision, and on the branch of 
a neighbouring cotton tree a small, wise-looking 
owl blinks knowingly at one. But always is 
there the suggestion of death lurking in the sombre 
depths of the foliage. More particularly is this 
the case where man has reclaimed with fire and 
plough some small part of the wild for his own 
advantage. Such, for example, are the plains of 
Cooch Behar, where the Kochs have bitten into 
the forest. The landscape here possesses the 
charm of a certain irregular uniformity. Vast 
plains dotted with expanses of immense rank 
grasses and patches of wild cardamom, stretch 
away as far as the eye can see until they lose 
themselves in a haze-girt horizon. Wherever 
one looks there are trees, sometimes singly, some- 
times in clumps, and sometimes in large areas. 
The wattle and thatch houses of the people are 
half hidden among banana trees and bamboos. 
The soil is ight and sandy, and mustard, tobacco, 
and sugar-cane are prominent crops. Wild fig 
and plum trees bring forth a small, hard inedible 
fruit. Cattle graze on the edges of the forest. 
But these men are clearly at war with the 
forest. A cloud of vultures circling round on 
the outskirts of a village, tells of the toll taken 
by the forest from the people’s herds. There are 
few more repulsive sights than that of a crowd of 
vultures burying their long, gruesome - looking 
heads and necks into the entrails of a carcase. 


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JUNGLE LIFE 201 


Even the near approach of man drives them off 
only for a little way. Gorged and_bloated- 
looking, they hover away for a short distance, 
palpably intoxicated by their heavy meal. And 
then gaining courage they return, stripping the 
bones of every vestige of flesh in an incredibly 
short space of time. 

Once only did I hear of a case of friendly 
intercourse between the denizens of the forest and 
man. A young child disappeared from a village 
in Cooch Behar. Some time afterwards a small 
being, scarcely recognisable as human, was found 
in the forest, brought up from its earliest years 
by a bear. It was more animal than human, and, 
utterly unversed in the ways of men, died not 
long after its reclamation. But this case was as 
exceptional as it was pathetic. While I was in 
camp, the guest of His Highness the Maharaja, 
news was brought in of the death of a villager in 
an encounter with a bear. We went out at once, 
and were successful in tracking her down and 
shooting her. Near by we located and caught 
her cub. We brought him back to camp in a 
sack, and offered him milk and bananas; but he 
was bad-tempered and spilt the milk and growled 
at the bananas. He was instinctively averse to 
entering into any sort of relations with man. 

High up on the lovely wooded ranges of the 
Kastern Himalayas beyond the range of carnivor- 
ous animals, the forest offers a more friendly 
welcome to man. And here man, in the shape 
of the priesthood of lamaism, has built himself 
retreats in the heart of kindly Nature. But of 
this I have written elsewhere.! 


1 In “ Lands of the Thunderbolt.”’ 


CHAPTER XVII 
PICTURES FROM AN ETHNIC PAGEANT 


THE immense contrasts in the physical character- 
istics of India impress themselves upon the visitor 
at a very early date, as do also the obvious dif- 
ferences of race to which reference has been made 
in the opening chapter. 

Later on, as he becomes more familiar with 
his surroundings, it is borne in upon him that 
besides differences of race and community there 
are differences of epoch—that in India at the 
present day there exist side by side types of at 
least two complex and highly-developed civilisa- 
tions—those of modern Europe and of ancient 
India—and types also of very primitive man. It 
is as though the evolution of sections of the people 
—ethical, social, intellectual, and religious—had 
been arrested centuries back, while that of others 
had proceeded normally. It would be difficult 
to imagine a greater contrast than that which 
is provided by the existence side by side of the 
primitive animist with his crude superstitions and 
his rigidly-restricted intellectual outlook, and the 
cultured Brahman with his lofty conceptions of 
the Divine, his daring speculations on the nature 
of things, and his meticulously ordered life as a 
member of a social organisation which demands 
of him a strict observance, in all his daily doings, 
of a highly-elaborated ritual. 

The persons classed for census purposes as 

202 


AN ETHNIC PAGEANT 203 


animists, of whom there are estimated to be 
“upwards of 10,000,000 scattered over the con- 
tinent, provide an example of arrested intellectual 
and religious evolution. The stunted growth of 
their intellect renders them credulous to a degree 
which the man from the Western hemisphere 
finds it difficult to fathom. And credulity, at 
times, is responsible for tortuous thinking giving 
rise to action of a startling kind. Here is an 
example. A number of buildings were in process 
of erection in the district of Midnapur not long 
ago, when some temporary difficulty arose in 
connection with the supply of water. An idea 
took shape—how or why, who can say ?—among 
the labourers employed at the works at a neigh- 
bouring railway centre, that to overcome this 
difficulty the contractors were kidnapping children 
to be buried in the foundations as an offering of 
appeasement to the malignant unseen power that 
was interfering with the work. They marched 
forth en masse to deal with the supposed kid- 
nappers, and the district officials found them- 
selves confronted with one of those strange prob- 
lems with which the records of the administration 
are strewn. 

Another element in the population to which 
the general appellation of ‘‘ criminal tribes ”’ has 
been given, may be taken as an example more 
particularly of arrested ethical evolution. It is 
estimated that there are 4,000,000 of these 
troublesome and unattractive people scattered 
over the face of the land. It has been said of 
them that the whole structure of their social 
habits is conceived upon the basis of crime. 
Their distinguishing characteristic is, in fact, the 
practice of burglary or theft as an hereditary 
occupation. There is on the Indian statute book 
an enactment for their exclusive benefit known 
as the Criminal Tribes Act of 1911, under the 


204 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


provisions of which members of such tribes may 
be concentrated in settlements, where they can be 
subjected to adequate supervision and assisted 
to gain a decent livelihood. The care of them, 
however, is only too often an unsatisfactory and 
a disheartening labour, and even the Salvation 
Army, which is co-operating with Government in 
the discharge of it, finds it a grievously-uphill 
task. 

My first acquaintance with a criminal tribe, as 
such, was at a settlement organised by the govern- 
ment of the United Provinces and managed by the 
Salvation Army in the neighbourhood of Morada- 
bad. All previous attempts to deal successfully 
with these people had failed. Attempts had been 
made to settle them on the land. They com- 
plained that land without cattle was useless ; 
and a paternal Government gave them cattle. 
This generosity was misplaced, for, instead of 
rearing cattle, they simply sold those that had 
been given them. They next demanded seed, and 
seed was given them. But when the time for 
sowing came, the seed was not forthcoming, for 
they had eaten it. The particular settlement 
which I visited was occupied by a tribe of people 
called Haburas. Efforts were being made to 
teach them the various processes in the manufac- 
ture of silk, and some progress was being made 
with the children. The adult part of the popula- 
tion was, for the most part, intractable. They 
sat in the sun round the courtyard, which formed 
the centre of the settlement, dozing or feeding on 
such things as lizards and other equally unappetis- 
ing dishes. They break the back of a lizard when 
caught, and then, when they are ready for a meal, 
toss it alive on to a fire. Mr. Begbie has given a 
vivid description of this and other settlements 
which he visited. ‘“‘ If you could look into the 
faces of these people,” he writes, ‘“‘ you would see 


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AN ETHNIC PAGEANT 205 


there a bitterness, a hopelessness, and a despair 
such as would almost terrify your well-being and 
make you afraid. . . . Nature has brought them 
to that point where they can experience suffering 
and exercise reflection, and then has abandoned 
them:}74 

In Bengal a settlement for the redemption of 
Kharwal Nuts has been organised at Saidpur 
under the management of the Salvation Army. 
Saidpur is a considerable railway centre, and a 
feature in the plan of redemption was the employ- 
ment of the Kharwal Nuts, under proper super- 
vision, as gangmen on the line. The intention 
was frustrated by the Kharwal Nuts themselves, 
whose incorrigible aversion to steady work baffled 
the laudable intentions and the ingenuity of 
Government, the railway officials, and the Salva- 
tion Army alike. Their origin is shrouded in 
obscurity, though they themselves maintain that 
their ancestors came from Bhojpur, in the district 
of Arrah in Bihar. They may be classed as 
animists, though they worship the Hindu goddess 
Kali and other deities of their own, but have no 
regular priests. Their moral code is a simple one, 
consisting of a solitary commandment, ‘* Thou 
shalt not be found out.” They declare that they 
cannot live without intoxicating drink. They 
live the life of gypsies, wandering over the 
countryside, with no ostensible means of liveli- 
hood other than begging. Their hereditary pro- 
fession is, however, thieving. And, despite every 
endeavour, they are perpetually breaking out of 
the settlement on thieving expeditions, and as 
perpetually smuggling intoxicating liquor in. 
The children are taught a single game for their 
amusement, the preparation for, commission of, 
and hiding after theft and dacoity. I have been 
told that there have even been occasions when the 

1 * Other Sheep,”’ by Harold Begbie. 


206 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


small children of the manager of the Saidpur 
settlement have been dragged into this elevating 
pastime to give an added touch of realism by play- 
ing the part of police ! 

A panchayat has been instituted in the settle- 
ment for the disposal of cases among the inmates. 
Its decisions, which are binding upon the com- 
munity, are determined solely by expediency. In 
the early days of the settlement, money was 
stolen from the manager. On the panchayat 
being informed the money was repaid, and no 
further thefts were committed against him. Ad- 
mirable, no doubt, and much to the credit of the 
panchayat! The same body heard an inmate of 
the settlement informing the manager that he 
knew who were the perpetrators of a recent crime, 
and they had him up and fined him Rs. 16. 
Another example of the award of sentences is not 
without its humorous side. Two men from the 
settlement had broken out and joined a third 
man on a dacoity expedition. On their return 
they were awarded a heavy fine. For breaking 
out with intent to commit crime? Certainly 
not ; but for carelessness in allowing their accom- 
plice to lose his life while engaged upon the 
enterprise. 

A characteristic which in a better cause might 
be regarded as meritorious is a baffling esprit de 
corps. In practice it acts as a barrier against 
redemption. There are inmates of the settlement 
who have developed an aptitude for weaving, and 
one such person was ready to cut himself off from 
the tribe and to become a useful member of 
society. There were, however, difficulties in the 
way, and when not long afterwards he died, he 
was refused burial by his fellows, and this last 
office had to be performed for him by the manager 
himself. 

It would be difficult, as I have said, to find a 


AN ETHNIC PAGEANT 207 


greater contrast between any people than that 
between the class of which I have been writing— 
mere flotsam on the fringe of civilisation—and 
the orthodox high-caste Hindu. However amor- 
phous Hinduism may be as a religious faith— 
upon which I shall have something to say later 
on—it possesses an elaborate and rigid code as a 
social system. What a man may eat, with whom 
he may eat it, from whom he may take water, 
from what group of people he may take his wife : 
all these things are laid down for him by rules 
which he may break—but at his peril. As every 
one knows who knows anything at all of India, it 
is all a matter of caste. What is not so generally 
known is what precisely is meant by caste. It is 
often popularly supposed that the term caste 
refers to the four great divisions into which, as 
we learn from the ancient Sanskrit texts of a semi- 
priestly and semi-legal character, the immigrant 
Aryan people was separated ; that is to say, the 
Brahmans or priesthood, the Kshatriya or military 
class, the Vaisya or husbandmen, and the Sudra 
or lower orders, whose function it was to serve the 
members of the first three. These were certainly 
more or less definite classes—as they are to this 
day—which were evolved by a process of elabora- 
tion from the two great groups of people who met 
on the soil of India as a result of the incursions 
from the north-west, to which reference has been 
made, namely, the immigrant Aryans and the 
aboriginal inhabitants whom they found already 
in possession of the land. The former were 
sharply divided from the latter in that they alone 
were admitted to the reading of the Vedas and 
to participation in the religious ceremonies associ- 
ated therewith. They were the true Aryans, and 
to this day the members of the three classes in 
question are known as the twice-born, from the 
fact that they are initiated into the ceremonial 


208 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


of the ancient religion and invested with the 
sacred thread—the outward and visible sign of 
their second or spiritual birth. In this general 
classification of the people of India there was a 
fifth division, to which were assigned all those 
who could lay no claim to membership of the 
other classes. These were regarded as “ untouch- 
ables,’? and according to the racial theory set 
forth above, of which the late Sir H. Risley was 
a prominent exponent, consisted of the pure 
aboriginal tribes, the intermediate class of Sudras 
being in all probability the offspring of Aryan 
fathers and aboriginal mothers. 

But these great divisions of the people are 
not, strictly speaking, the castes of the present 
day. The castes as they exist to-day consist of 
innumerable water-tight groups, which are now 
generally believed to have come into existence 
quite independently of the classes referred to 
above, though they claim to belong to one or 
other of them, the social status of the caste de- 
pending upon the class to which it belongs. These 
castes are very numerous, no less than 180 main 
castes being recognised in the census returns. 
These in their turn are split into innumerable 
sub-castes, and the sub-castes in their turn into 
smaller groups, to which various terms, such as 
gotra, are applied. Nor have the many castes 
come into existence as the result of a single in- 
fluence. The late Sir Herbert Risley distin- 
guished seven different types of caste, the most 
important being based on tribe, on occupation, 
on sect, and on race. The feature of the caste 
system which is most apparent to the visitor to 
India is the restriction which it imposes on the 
freedom of its members in the matter of social 
intercourse. For example, a person with whom 
one has intimate relations in commercial or public 
life is prohibited from dining with one. In the 


AN ETHNIC PAGEANT 209 


south of India he will be struck with the gulf 
‘which yawns between the man of high caste and 
the “ untouchable.” Amongst the latter there 
are castes whose members pollute a Brahman if 
they come within range of sixty-four feet of him. 
Such persons are prohibited from even entering 
the high-caste quarter of a village, and must leave 
the public highway on the approach of a Brahman. 
There is a large labouring caste in Southern India, 
named Paraiyan, with a membership of 2,500,000. 
It is from this caste that our word pariah is 
derived. But the fundamental test of caste is the 
restriction which it places upon a man’s freedom 
of choice in the matter of marriage. The sub- 
caste is endogamous, the gotra exogamous, which 
means that a man may not marry within his 
gotra nor outside his sub-caste. 

It is, however, as I have said, in connection 
with caste rules on the subject of purity of food 
that the visitor is usually made aware of the exist- 
ence of a rigid socio-religious system governing 
the lives of all those calling themselves Hindus. 
And it was a dramatic incident, arising out of a 
violation of these rules, that apprised me of the 
sanctity with which the system is still regarded. 

During the summer of 1917 it was persistently 
rumoured in Calcutta that the ghi (clarified 
butter) sold in the markets was adulterated with 
animal fat and other substances. Not only is 
ghi an important article in the Hindu dietary, but 
it is also an indispensable article in religious 
ceremonies, which are rendered ineffective by the 
use of an impure substance. The matter was 
consequently one of gravity to the orthodox 
sections of the community, and particularly to 
the Marwaris, the wealthy trading community 
hailing from Rajputana in the west of India, 
which has long been domiciled in Calcutta, where 
its members constitute a distinct and important 

P 


210 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


section of the population. At the instance of 
the Marwari Association, samples of ghi were 
obtained from various markets in the town, an 
analysis of which showed that by far the greater 
part of the commodity sold in Calcutta was grossly 
adulterated. One such sample was found to 
contain no ghi at all, another only 5 per cent; 
and of a very large number of samples examined, 
only seven were reported to consist of pure ghi. 
These lamentable disclosures very soon became 
public property, with the result that a deputation 
of Brahmans demanded of the Marwari Associa- 
tion the excommunication of the offenders. The 
Association delayed coming to a decision and the 
Brahmans took action. Learned priests were 
summoned from Benares, meetings were held, 
and a decision come to that all Brahmans who 
had unwittingly made use of adulterated ghi must 
undergo a ceremony of purification on the banks 
of the holy river. 

In accordance with this decision a crowd of 
3000 Brahmans assembled on the riverside at 
Jaganath Ghat on the morning of August the 
16th, and began the performance of the ceremony 
of purification known as Prayaschita Homa. 'The 
gathering steadily increased until, by the morning 
of the 19th, the number of those performing 
penance amounted to close upon 5000. During 
these long, hot August days and on through the 
heavy hours of night, these men fasted and repeated 
the mantras ordained for the purpose; and on the 
banks of the sacred river, here in the heart of 
the second city in the British Empire, in the 
presence of vast assemblages of people numbering 
many thousands, fires of purification burned with 
steady flame, fed from time to time with offerings 
of spices and ghi. 

The situation had assumed immense propor- 
tions. For the time being it occupied the atten- 


AN ETHNIC PAGEANT 211 


_tion of the Calcutta public to the exclusion of all 

else. It filled the columns of the daily press, and 
on the last day of August an influential and 
representative deputation of about 100 Hindu 
gentlemen, the spokesmen of a large number of 
associations, waited upon me and asked that 
immediate action might be taken to prevent the 
sale of adulterated ghiin future. A bill to amend 
certain sections of the Calcutta Municipal Act 
was immediately drafted, and passed through 
all its stages at a single sitting of the Bengal 
Legislative Council three days later. 

Greater interest, however, attaches to the 
action taken by the community chiefly affected. 
Mention has been made in Chapter XI. of the 
codes of laws evolved by the various corporations 
of ancient India, such as crafts and merchant 
guilds. In a communication to me on the subject 
of the steps to be taken in the situation which had 
arisen, the Marwari Association spoke of the 
powers which “ under the unwritten social laws of 
the country the caste Panchayats have possessed 
from time immemorial for dealing with offences 
against society and religion’’; and they added 
that “the inhabitants of many of the principal 
villages and towns of Rajputana now living in 
Calcutta have chosen their own representatives 
for the constitution of a regular panchayat ”’ to 
deal with the offenders. This panchayat, which 
consisted of three different committees charged 
with dealing with offenders belonging to three 
different castes—the Agarwallas, the Maheswaris, 
and the Brahmans—sat from 11 a.m. until 
8.30 P.M. on August the 19th, when it announced 
its decisions. Two Agarwalla firms were fined 
Rs. 100,000 and Rs. 25,000 respectively, and the 
proprietors excommunicated for a year ; a number 
of Maheswaris were excommunicated for life; 
and two Brahmans were excommunicated for two 


212 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


years and three months respectively and fined. 
These decisions were conveyed by representatives 
of the three committees of the panchayat to the 
Brahmans still engaged in the ceremony of 
purification on the river-banks. They were 
accepted as satisfactory, and on the following 
day the Prayaschita was brought to a close, the 
Brahmans returning to their homes. 

The interest of the incident lay in the proof 
which it afforded of the latent strength of the 
ancient socio-religious structure of the Indian 
people. An offence had been committed against 
social tenets and religious practice. At once the 
priestly caste, the ancient aristocracy of the race 
emerged as the traditional leaders of the people 
and dominated the situation. Amid the sur- 
roundings of a great Western city of the twentieth 
century was enacted a scene culled from the drama 
of Indian life two thousand years or more ago. 
In this incongruous setting was performed an 
elaborate ritual reaching far back into Vedic 
times. The admittedly efficient administrative 
machinery imported from the West fell into the 
background of men’s minds. It might be called 
in to assist in guarding against similar trouble in 
the future, but it was powerless to deal with the 
situation which had actually arisen. It was to 
the caste Panchayat, with its laws and its author- 
ity rooted in antiquity, that the Indian turned 
in this emergency which had arisen in matters 
affecting the most intimate aspects of his life. 

It would be a mistake, of course, to suppose 
that in these days a Brahman is necessarily a 
scholar or a priest. Brahmans are found in all 
ranks of life, rich and poor, high and low; he 
may be a priest or a peasant, a scholar or a dunce, 
a man of refinement and culture, or one steeped 
in ignorance and superstition. One of the most 
tragic and pathetic examples of distorted religious 


AN ETHNIC PAGEANT 213 


zeal, which came to my notice when in Bengal, 
“was that of a villager who had sacrificed his baby 
daughter to Kali. The crime was deliberate and 
cold-blooded, and no grounds existed for the 
exercise of the prerogative of mercy. He was a 
Brahman. But broadly speaking, the Brahmans 
still form an aristocracy of the distinctive culture 
of India. 


CHAPTER XVIII 
THE INCURSION OF ISLAM 


THE ethnic pageant which passes across one’s 
vision as one travels over India is made up of 
many tableaux. There is one such tableau which 
at once arrests attention because of the many 
points of contrast which it provides with the rest 
of the procession of which it forms a part. It is 
the tableau in which we see represented a religion, 
a civilisation and culture, and an outlook differ- 
ing profoundly in all material respects from those 
of Hinduism, but nevertheless an essential com- 
ponent of the India of to-day—that of Islam. 
That the gulf which separates the Muham- 
madan from the Hindu is a wide one becomes 
apparent from the moment that one begins to 
understand the nature of the social systems 
which are the product of Islam and Hinduism 
respectively. That of the latter, as has been 
shown, is exclusive: that of the former is com- 
munistic. Under the Hindu social system men 
are graded minutely and segregated in an infinite 
number of water-tight compartments: under 
Islam all men are equal. Hinduism is essentially 
aristocratic : Muhammadanism is as emphatically 
democratic. The result of these differences is 
astonishing. ‘Two immense communities live side 
by side over vast tracts of the Indian continent ; 
yet neither can claim a relative within the ranks 
of the other, for Hindu caste restrictions make 
214 


THE INCURSION OF ISLAM 215 


intermarriage an impossibility. Mention has been 
made earlier of the separate supplies of drink- 
ing water provided at the railway stations for 
Muhammadans and Hindus. And as every Indian 
administrator knows, the chasm between the 
religious observances of the two communities is 
such as to constitute a perpetual potential source 
of racial rioting. Hindu veneration for the cow 
as a sacred animal is ingrained and very real, and 
no orthodox Hindu can think of the slaughter of 
cattle without experiencing feelings of positive 
pain. On the other hand, the religious observ- 
ances of the Muhammadan demand the sacrifice 
of the cow—hence the ever-present seeds of 
trouble. And just as the slaughter of cattle is 
an abomination to the Hindu, so the images in 
the temples and the idol processions of the Hindus 
are an offence against the austere monotheism 
of the Muhammadan. Closer investigation dis- 
closes other divisions between the two com- 
munities, notably, differences of language. The 
classical language of the Hindus is Sanskrit, those 
of the Muhammadans, Arabic and Persian. And 
just as Hindi may be said to be the spoken 
language distinctive of the Hindus, so may Urdu 
be said to be the distinctive tongue of the 
Muhammadans. Hence the teaching, or its omis- 
sion, of the one or the other in the schools, is a 
potential source of communal dissatisfaction. 

But the difference between Islam and Hinduism 
is brought most strikingly to the notice of the 
visitor by the contrast between Muhammadan and 
Hindu architecture, to which reference has been 
made in an earlier chapter. And if one ponders 
upon the contrast between these two types of 
self-expression, it is borne in upon one that here 
one sees but the reflection of a similar contrast in 
the environment in which their authors were 
respectively nurtured. I have spoken already of 


216 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


the paramount part played by the forest in the 
childhood of that branch of the Aryan race, which 
made its home in the hospitable reaches of the 
Ganges valley. And if one studies the architec- 
ture which it evolved as it grew from childhood 
to maturer years, one finds little difficulty in 
seeing in it an exuberance of ornamentation and 
a complexity of design which mirror faithfully 
enough the rich luxuriance of tropical vegetation. 
As one gazes at the shimmering beauty and the 
wealth of detail upon the walls and pillars of the 
Dilwara temples on Mount Abu, and gazes up at 
ceilings “‘ whose workmanship dims the memory 
of the stairway of Christchurch and the roof of 
the Divinity School in Oxford, and gives the 
spectator a new standard of beauty,”’? one calls 
to mind instinctively the creeper-clad tree-trunks 
and the leafy canopy of the Indian forest. One 
sees this resemblance asserting itself — whether 
recognised by the writers or not—in Mrs. Steven- 
son’s description of them as “‘a very fairyland 
of beauty, the fineness of whose carving is only 
equalled by the white tracery of hoar-frost ”’ ; * 
and again in Professor D. R. Bhandarkar’s refer- 
ence to “the mysterious beauty of this long 
pradakshina (pillared corridor) in the mystic play 
of light accentuated here and there by the gleam 
of white marble,’ *? which conjures up a vision 
of a forest glade lit up with flashes of sun- 
light glinting through the tree-tops. The same 
thought inevitably comes to mind when one 
reads his description of the hall of the temple 
‘‘ with its intricate forest of pillars elaborately 
carved.” | 

In the same way, the spaciousness and purity 
of line of the great buildings of Islam conjure up 


1 “ The Heart of Jainism,” by Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson. 

2 Ibid. 

s “Some Temples on Mount Abu,” contributed to Rupaim, July 
1920. 





Plate 18. 


THE DILWARA TEMPLE ON MOUNT ABU. 


©... an exuberance of ornamentation and a complexity of design which mirror faithfully 
enough the rich luxuriance of tropical vegetation. 













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THE INCURSION OF ISLAM 217 


visions of vast spaces and uninterrupted horizons ; 
their fountains and water-channels and_ cool 
pavilions, the oases which acquire so poignant a 
significance in a weary and dry land. Their kin 
with the natural beauty of the land where Islam 
was born strikes one irresistibly when one has 
before one a picture of the founder of this great 
and militant creed and his environment, sketched 
in strong and vivid outline by some master pen, 
such, for example, as that of Carlyle. His 
description of the Arabian desert at once directs 
attention to its salient features—‘ Savage, in- 
accessible rock mountains, great grim deserts 
alternating with beautiful strips of verdure : 
wherever water is, there is greenness, beauty : 
odoriferous balm shrubs, date trees, frankincense 
trees. Consider that wide, waste horizon of sand, 
empty, silent like a sand sea, dividing habitable 
place from habitable. You are all alone there, 
left alone with the universe ; by day a fierce sun 
blazing down on it with intolerable radiance ; by 
night the great deep heaven with its stars.””> And 
then we are given a portrait of the man—”* He is 
alone there, deep down in the bosom of the 
wilderness, has to grow up so—alone with Nature 
and his own thoughts. . .. A spontaneous, 
passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of 
wild faculty, fire, and light; of wild worth all 
uncultured, working out his life-task in the depths 
of the desert there.” And these great spaces 
underfoot and the mystery of the star-studded 
heavens above made a deep impression upon his 
inquiring mind—‘‘ From of old a_ thousand 
thoughts, in his pilgrimings and wanderings, had 
been in this man: What am I? What is this 
unfathomable Thing I live in which men name 
universe ? Whatis Life? Whatis Death? What 
am I to believe? What amItodo? The grim 
rocks of Mount Hara, of Mount Sinai, the stern, 


218 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


sandy solitudes answered not. The great heaven 
rolling silent overhead, with its blue glancing 
stars, answered not. There was no answer. The 
man’s own soul, and what of God’s inspiration 
dwelt there, had to answer!” 

And as the architecture of these peoples was 
the embodiment in wood and stone of their ideas, 
particularly in the realm of religious thought, so 
may the same divergence which strikes one in 
the character of their buildings be expected in 
their conceptions of the spiritual world. If the 
exuberant variety of a prolific tropical environ- 
ment is mirrored in the religious buildings of the 
Hindus, it will be reflected, surely, in their ideas 
of the unseen powers to whom they are erected. 
And this is of course the case. The unseen 
world of the Hindus is peopled with gods infinite 
in number and kind. In the same way, just as 
there was no variety in the environment of the 
Arabs, nothing but an awful aridity, hard in out- 
line and of a stern nature, so was their conception 
of that which lay beyond their world a mono- 
theistic one. To the Bedouin sheik, Muhammad, 
as to the Bedouin sheik, Abraham, before him, 
there was but one God—and He was of like nature 
with the land of those who worshipped Him, a 
stern and a jealous God. 

The atmosphere of Arabia clings to the world- 
wide institution which has sprung from the 
preaching of the Arabian Prophet. No one who 
has heard the Koran recited by the mullah is 
likely to forget the curious rhythmic declamation 
produced by a sing-song modulation of the voice, 
which is the traditional method of reading the 
sacred volume. Like so much else appertaining 
to Islam, it comes from the desert. Thus sang 
the Arab camel-driver long before the days of 
Muhammad as he urged on his slow-moving 


1 Carlyle’s ‘‘ Heroes ”>—Mahomet. 


THE INCURSION OF ISLAM 219 


charges across the trackless waste. The words 
were different, but the way of speaking them was 
the same. Islam grew up in the desert, and the 
simplicity and the vigour of life in the desert 
stamps all its institutions. Later, it is true, pomp 
and luxury blossomed forth in the Court of the 
caliphs, notably in that of the Omayyads of 
Damascus ; but these things were alien from, and 
not characteristic of, the teaching of the Prophet 
of Arabia. Abu Bakr, the first caliph, lived 
during the early months of his tenure of the office 
under a tent of camel hide in a small village out- 
side Mecca. Later, when he moved his abode to 
the town itself, he was served by a single slave. 
The temperament of the early leaders of Islam 
had in it the grit and hardness of the land in 
which they were nurtured. They demanded of 
their disciples an unquestioning obedience. 
Discipline was strengthened by an astute 
employment of their religious fervour. With 
clockwork regularity, prayer was led by the com- 
mander of the forces five times a day. The floor 
of the mosque resembled a drill-ground, the con- 
eregation an army. Ranged in compact order 
behind their leader, they imitated with military 
precision his every movement. The call to 
prayer became a bugle-call sounding the fall in ; 
the service a drill by which the people were taught 
to respond en masse to the commands of a single 
man. There are few more impressive sights even 
at the present day than that presented by the 
courtyard of a mosque—the great Court of the 
Juma Masjid at Delhi, for example—at the time 
of the celebration of the service on one of the great 
days of the Muhammadan year. The whole vast 
courtyard is crowded with picturesque, turbaned 
figures, in long lines, gazing at the Imam. Prayers 
are intoned and the great congregation falls to its 
knees, and from time to time bows down as one 


220 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


man to the earth, each man resting on his hands 
and knees and placing his forehead on the ground. 
The discipline thus inculcated has gripped the 
follower of the Prophet so powerfully, that he 
responds to the call automatically, whether he 
actually hears it or not. At the prescribed hour 
the devout Moslem turns towards Mecca and 
prays, in the mosque, in the street, in the field, 
wherever he may be. When the reformed legis- 
lative council came into existence in Bengal in 
1921, the Moslem element in it insisted upon a 
daily adjournment of a quarter of an hour at the 
time of the evening prayer. 

There is, perhaps, no more moving celebration 
in the annals of religious observance than the 
annual celebration of the Mohurrum. A passion- 
play of intense dramatic content, whereby is kept 
in perpetual remembrance a shocking tragedy 
arising out of the fierce personal jealousies and 
tribal animosities amid which Islam was reared, 
it is suffused with the atmosphere of the land and 
the times in which it was originally enacted. 
Staged upon the Plain of Kerbela, a hungry 
waste stretching in unbroken monotony from the 
banks of the Euphrates river towards the setting 
sun, it went near to rending in twain the edifice 
which was being raised up on the foundations laid 
by Muhammad. It did, in fact, split Islam into 
the two great divisions which have persisted to 
the present day, those of the Sunnis and Shiahs 
respectively. Those who have travelled over the 
great rolling expanses which lie between the 
Kuphrates and Tigris rivers, and who have en- 
countered in their depths roving bands of Arab 
horsemen, whose attitude has been a matter of 
anxious speculation, will have little difficulty in 
picturing the scene. 

A caravan of horsemen and foot people is 
making its way across the dusty expanse. It is 





Plate 79. 


THE JumMA Masjip AT DELHI. 


Tt ee : : : : : 
Prayers are intoned and the great congregation falls to its knees and from time to time bows 
down as one man to the earth.” 





nt ne es ae ae re 


ze Pe adele ae 


" i Ly, 





THE INCURSION OF ISLAM 221 


led by a young Arab sheik, Husain, the son of 
Ali, who had espoused Fatimah, the daughter 
of the Prophet, whose death had taken place 
amid the lamentations of his people in Medina 
some fifty years before. He is making his way 
with his family and a little band of followers 
to the town of Kufah, for the theologians of that 
place, viewing with fanatical dislike the riotous 
living of the Omayyads of Damascus, whose 
scion Yazid has claimed the caliphate, have 
bidden him take upon himself the mantle of the 
Prophet whose descendant he is. As the caravan 
toils on its way, the attention of its leader is 
caught by a little cloud of dust far off on the 
horizon to the south. As it approaches it in- 
creases in size after the manner of a dust storm, 
blown before the wind. No dust storm, however, 
this, for there emerges from it, dimly at first, 
but in clearer outline as it descends upon those 
watching it, a great host of horsemen. Little 
doubt as to their mission. They have come, 
three thousand strong, under the command of 
the Governor of Basra, and by order of Yazid, 
to bar the way to Kufah. The sun streams 
down upon these two hosts drawn up in the 
middle of the endless plain. Beyond them is 
silence and the emptiness of space. From the 
town of Kufah comes no sign. And alone in the 
wilderness with his little band of followers, the 
Arab sheik is called upon to take a great decision. 
Will he submit and, swearing the oath of fealty 
to Yazid, live? Or will he die? The answer 
is not long in doubt. One by one they fall, 
stricken down on the dusty earth until Husain 
and one small son are all that are left alive of 
those who had set forth with such high hopes 
for Kufah. The Arab sheik sinks on the ground 
clasping the boy in his arms. An arrow loosed 
at random kills the child, and a little later Husain 


222 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


himself is struck in the mouth as he stoops to 
moisten his parched lips with water. 

Thus died the descendant of the Prophet ; and 
to this day, on the anniversary of the massacre, 
a thrill passes through the Muhammadan world. 
It is this grim tragedy which for the Shiah 
Muhammadans—the followers of Ali and the 
opponents of the Omayyads—has become the 
subject of a solemn and moving celebration. 
Year by year the death and burial of the martyrs 
is re-enacted with a realism which has to be 
seen to be believed. In Persia, the stronghold 
of the Shiahs, I have seen a vast concourse of 
haggard and wild-eyed mourners cutting them- 
selves with knives in a frenzy of despairing grief, 
until the blood has flowed forth, bespattering 
them in their white garments with great splashes 
of crimson. There is in the case of the Mohurrum, 
as an Indian writer has observed, ‘* no simulation 
of grief but the actual passion and exaltation 
of most poignant sorrow, the heart-rending ex- 
perience of a loss and bereavement just sustained. 
These are no play-actors but genuine mourners 
whose heart-strings are racked and drawn taut 
by the intensity of grief.’’ 4 

Though the Sunnis often stand aloof from 
these observances during the greater part of the 
Mohurrum, they celebrate the Ashura or tenth 
day, which is an important day for the whole of 
the Moslem world. And pondering upon this 
great annual celebration one is struck by a 
special significance which it possesses. For it 
knits the Muhammadans of India to something 
which is not Indian—the great brotherhood of 
Islam which transcends the bounds of countries, 
and from which comes a call independent of, 
and greater than the call of country. The truth 
of this was demonstrated when, during the 

1 Mr. N. Gupta, in the ‘*‘ Modern Review ”’ for November 1922. 


THE INCURSION OF ISLAM 223 


Kilafat agitation after the War, appreciable 
numbers of Indian Muhammadans, leaving home 
and country, went forth to Afghanistan and 
Central Asia as fugitives, following the example 
of the Prophet himself when he fled from faithless 
Mecca to the faithful of Medina. 

What, then, was the manner of the coming of 
this great faith from the stony deserts of Arabia 
to the plains of Hindustan’? The rapidity with 
which Islam spread after the death of Muham- 
mad in A.D. 632 is one of the most remarkable 
episodes in the annals of mankind. The religious 
fervour of the armies of the caliph carried them 
victoriously north and east over Syria, Meso- 
potamia, and Persia; and within a century the 
waves of the rising tide were lapping against 
the shores of India. From Makran the victorious 
Arabs pushed on eastward and in a.p. 712 
wrested the sceptre from the ruler of Sind, 
which thenceforward became a Muhammadan 
State. 

It was not, however, until nearly three cen- 
turies later that the armies of Islam became a 
serious menace to India proper; and it was not 
along the desert highway of Makran but through 
the historic gateway in the North-West Frontier 
once more that the incursion came. This fresh 
influx, which was to mark a new epoch in 
the history of Hindustan, was heralded towards 
the close of the tenth century A.D. by a series 
of border forays between the Rajput ruler of 
the Punjab and a recently established princi- 
pality of Turkish race with its capital at Gazni. 
And in A.D. 1001, a decisive battle fought 
at the foot of the mountains near Peshawar 
left the Hindu forces crushed and broken and 
Peshawar an annex to the Moslem principality. 
The hero of this exploit was one Mahmitd of 
Gazni, a fierce and dynamic figure, who opened 


224, INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


the gates of India to the on-coming hordes of 
Islam which swept down through the mountain 
passes wave upon wave, until India became a 
vast Muhammadan empire. With the same icono- 
clastic zeal with which the Prophet of Arabia 
had smashed the idols set up by the backsliding 
Meccans in the Kaaba—the holy place dedicated 
by the Patriarch Abraham to an undeviating 
monotheism — did Mahmid determine to lay 
waste the temples of the idolaters. His most 
famous and probably his most destructive visita- 
tion was to the renowned temple of Somnath, 
which he destroyed in A.D. 1024, carrying portions 
of its sacred lingam to Gazni, there to be 
trodden underfoot at the threshold of the great 
mosque of the city. 

The incursions of Sultan Mahmiid were the 
forerunners of others of a more permanent 
character. The next invader of importance 
was Sultan Muhammad of Ghor, who began 
his operations against India within a century 
and a half of the death of Mahmid of Gazni, 
which took place in A.D. 1030; and by the 
close of the twelfth century, the conquest of 
Upper India, including Bengal, was all but 
complete. It was his successful General, Kutb- 
ud-din, who became the first Muhammadan 
Kmperor of India; and with his accession to the 
throne at Delhi began the long line of rulers 
popularly though inaccurately described as the 
Pathan dynasty, lasting from a.pD. 1206 until 
A.D. 1526. Under the despotic rule of the Sultans 
at Delhi, and the equally arbitrary sway of the 
governors of the more distant provinces, Muham- 
madanism spread. To this end immigration 
was aided by conversion, often undergone from 
motives of expediency, so that when the next 
famous incursion down the historic highway 
from Afghanistan took place—that of Babur, 


THE INCURSION OF ISLAM 225 


the founder of the Moghul dynasty—there was 
already a large Moslem element in the population 
of India. The splendour of the Moghul dynasty 
during nearly two centuries under men whose 
names are famous throughout the world—Babur, 
Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shahjahan, and 
Aurungzeb—is well known, and is testified to 
by the great buildings with which they beautified 
the cities of Fatepur Sikri, Agra, and Delhi. 
The imperishable place which this great line of 
sovereigns has won for itself in the temple of 
fame was due in no small degree to the 
breadth of vision and the religious tolerance 
of the earlier rulers of the line, just as its 
eventual break-up was due in large measure to 
the religious bigotry of Aurungzeb. After the 
latter’s death in a.pD. 1707, Moghul sovereigns 
continued to succeed one another upon a nomin- 
ally Moghul throne. But this procession was 
little more than a shadow-show thrown upon 
a screen dominated by anarchy, from which the 
country was only freed by the rise to power of 
Britain. 

Muhammadan empire in India has receded 
into the dusty limbo of the past; but eight 
centuries of Muhammadan dominion have left 
an indelible imprint upon its soil, for Islam 
claims 70,000,000 of the 320,000,000 of the 
continent’s inhabitants. It is in the Punjab 
and the adjacent North-West Frontier Province, 
as one would expect, that Muhammadanism is 
most strongly entrenched at the present day. Of 
their joint population of 22,000,000, 13,000,000 
are returned as Moslems. South of the Punjab 
the percentage drops rapidly to twenty in the 
Presidency of Bombay. As one travels east the 
same falling off is noticeable. The United Pro- 
vinces, with its vast population of 47,000,000, 
contains less than 7,000,000 Moslems, and the 

Q 


226 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Central Provinces, lying to the south, less than 
600,000 out of a population of 14,000,000. 
Farther east still, in the province of Bihar and 
Orissa, we find little more than 3,500,000 Mu- 
hammadans in a population of 34,500,000. It 
comes as a complete surprise, consequently, to 
find in Bengal, lying still farther east, an immense 
Muhammadan population—no less, in fact, than 
24,000,000 out of a population of 45,500,000. 
How is it that in Bengal, with its intimate Hindu © 
associations stretching far back into the dim and 
distant past, we find an actual preponderance 
of Muhammadans? It can only be accounted 
for by the conversion of the people on a vast 
scale. And a little observation will show one 
many things which indicate that the bulk of the 
Moslem population is made up of the descendants 
of converted Hindus. I am acquainted with a 
polished Muhammadan gentleman occupying a 
prominent position as a public man among his 
co-religionists in the province, who is descended 
from a well-known Brahman family. Murshed 
Kuli Khan, the great diwan of Bengal, who 
moved the capital from Dacca to Murshidabad 
at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was 
himself the son of Brahman parents. An assistant 
inspector of schools in one of the eastern divisions 
of the Presidency stated officially not many 
years ago that he found about 50 per cent of 
Moslem boys in secondary schools holding the 
essentially Hindu doctrine of the transmigration 
of the soul; while a so-called Muhammadan sect, 
with the title of zazazwas, which deified their 
leader and worshipped him as a divinity, quite 
recently acquired a considerable vogue in the 
south-eastern districts of the Presidency. Such 
a practice, while in keeping with Hindu tradition 
and belief, is of course a rank violation of the 
tenets of Islam. 


THE INCURSION OF ISLAM 227 


The story of the Muhammadan conquest of 
.Bengal has been told in a volume entitled the 
** Riyazu-s-salatin,” a work compiled during the 
years 1787 and 1788 by one Ghulam Husain Salim, 
Zaidpuri, a servant of the East India Company, 
who was persuaded to undertake the work by 
Mr. George Udny, the Company’s representative 
at Malda. At the request of this gentleman, he 
tells us, he “‘ placed the finger of consent on the 
eye, and, girding up the loin of effort and venture, 
collected sentence after sentence from every 
source, and for a period of two years devoted him- 
self to the compilation and preparation of this 
history.”? In a picturesque passage in his intro- 
ductory chapter he makes it clear that it is to 
the Muhammadan period that he proposes to con- 
fine his history, for “inasmuch as the object of 
the author is to chronicle the history of the 
Musalman sovereigns, therefore, not busying him- 
self with the details of the affairs of the Hindu 
Rais, he reins back the graceful steed of the black 
pen of writing from striding this valley, and gives 
it permission to canter towards relating and re- 
citing the details of the history of the Muham- 
madan rulers and sovereigns.’?! His account of 
the Muhammadan conquest of Bengal is short 
and to the point. He tells us how a soldier of 
fortune, Muhammad Bakhtiar Khilji, having 
overrun Bihar, set out for Nadiah, the capital of 
Lakhmaniya, the aged sovereign of the Sena 
dynasty, which early in the twelfth century had 
shorn the still more famous Pala dynasty of much 
of its territory and power. The Raja was in the 
inner rooms of his palace, with his food before 
him, when Bakhtiar Khilji with eighteen followers 
burst into the building, and, rushing impetuously 


1 “The Riyazu-s-salatin,” translated from the original Persian by 
Maulavi Abdus Salam, with copious and valuable notes by the 
translator. 


228 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


upon the king’s retainers, “‘ put the harvest of the 
life of many to his thundering and flashing sword.”’ 
The aged king, “ getting confounded by the 
tumult of this affaire,’’ bolted by a back-door 
and sped barefoot to the river, where he escaped 
by boat. Whereupon “ Muhammad Bakhtiar, 
sweeping the town with the broom of devastation, 
completely demolished it, and making anew the 
city of Lakhnauti (Gaur), which from ancient 
times had been the seat of government of Bengal, 
his own metropolis, he ruled over Bengal.” From 
that time, adds the historian, “the kingdom 
of Bengal became subject to the emperors of 
Delhi.” 

If one cares to journey to the district of Malda 
in the north-west of the Presidency of Bengal 
as it is to-day, one will light upon interesting 
evidence in support of this statement of the his- 
torian. For here, in a tract of country which has 
been swallowed up to a great extent by the jungle, 
are to be seen the most imposing ruins of which 
Bengal can boast, the remains of two considerable 
cities, those of Gaur and Pandua. From Portu- 
guese sources we learn that the former was a city 
of stately buildings with broad, straight thorough- 
fares lined with shady trees, having a population 
of 1,200,000 souls. Standing amid its ruins to- 
day, with the jungle creeping up to the buildings 
themselves, it is difficult to believe that here 
stood, only a few short centuries ago, a city of 
such vast proportions. Its inhabitants must have 
been congested, for De Barrow states: “ The 
population is so great and the streets so thronged 
with the concourse and traffic of people, especi- 
ally of such as come to present themselves at the 
King’s court, that they cannot force their way 
past one another, and thus such as happen to 
fall among the horsemen or among the elephants, 
which are ridden by the lords and noblemen, are 


THE INCURSION OF ISLAM 229 


often killed on the spot and crushed under the 
feet of those beasts.” 4 

It remained the capital of Muhammadan 
Bengal until the middle of the fourteenth century, 
twenty-six viceroys from Bakhtiar Khilji ruling 
from it. In the year 4.p. 1338, Malik Fakhru-d- 
din, an armourer, “‘ meddling in administrative 
matters, obtained much influence, and resolving 
in mind to usurp the viceroyalty,” slew the vice- 
roy and ruled in his place. He did more, for, 
finding the empire of Muhammad Shah falling 
into decay, “he withdrew his hand from sub- 
mission to the Emperor of Delhi and proclaimed 
himself king.’”’ 2» For the next two centuries, till 
A.D. 1538, Bengal was ruled by independent 
Muhammadan kings, and for some part of this 
period, up to the year A.D. 1414, the capital was 
transferred to Pandua, a city twenty miles north- 
east of Gaur. It is here that still stands the 
finest known example of Muhammadan architec- 
ture in this part of India, a vast building known 
as the Adina Masjid. Built by order of Sikandar 
Shah in s.p. 1375, it recalls the great mosque of 
Damascus, which was the glory of the Omayyad 
caliphs, whose regime of pomp and splendour 
provided so great a contrast to the rigorous 
frugality of the caliph patriarchs whom they suc- 
ceeded. Both ground-plan and dimensions are 
said to be modelled on this famous building, from 
whose mimbar Muawiah, the founder of the 
Omayyad dynasty, preached and called for 
vengeance upon the murderers of the caliph 
Othman. Even in its decay it is a stupendous 
pile, a vast quadrilateral more than five hundred 
feet in length and not far short of three hundred 
feet in breadth. Its huge walls, of stone for the 


1 J am indebted to M. Abid Ali Khan of the Bengal P.W.D. for this 
quotation. 
2 * The Riyazu-s-salatin.” 


230 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


first eleven feet and of elaborately carved brick- 
work for another dozen feet, give an impression 
of immense solidity and strength. On the inside, 
opening on to the great central courtyard, are 
rows of cloisters; and in the centre of this en- 
closure can still be traced the walls of the great 
nave of the mosque, sixty-four feet in length and 
thirty-three feet' in breadth. The kiblah or 
prayer-niche still stands in a finely decorated wall, 
and not far from it is a magnificent mimbar or 
pulpit of black basalt and hornblende richly carved. 
To the north, looking down upon the pulpit, is an 
upper chamber, the Badshah-ka-Takht, or king’s 
gallery, containing three kiblahs in the west wall, 
beautifully ornamented with carving and with 
inscriptions in the picturesque Tughra character. 
And opening off this is another room, now roofless, 
known as Sikandar’s chamber, in which the king 
and his family sat, according to tradition, before 
and after the Friday prayers. 

Two centuries of independence were brought 
to a close in A.D. 1538, when the Afghan Sher 
Shah, emerging victorious from a welter of civil 
strife in Bihar and Bengal, became a power in 
the land, and, driving the Emperor Humayun 
into temporary exile, ascended the throne of 
Delhi in his place. For some years thereafter 
Bengal was ruled by military governors, and it 
was not until the year A.D. 1607 that the Moghul 
emperors, seated once more upon the throne at 
Delhi, established the system of civil government 
in Bengal, with a nazim at the head of the execu- 
tive and a diwan in charge of revenue and finance 
generally, which Clive found in force when he won 
his dramatic victory over Surajah Dowla on the 
field of Plassey. 

It was under one of the early nazims, Shaik 
Allanddin Chrishti Farugi I‘tizad-ud-Daulah, 
Nawab Islam Khan, that the Moslem capital of 


THE INCURSION OF ISLAM 231 


Bengal was transferred east to Dacca, where it 
remained for nigh on a century. This move was 
‘made with a view to consolidating the eastern 
frontier of the Muhammadan Empire. It was 
accompanied by a forward policy, under which 
colonies of Moslem feudal barons were planted 
out in the eastern districts, and a powerful fleet, 
based on Dacca, patrolled the waters of the Padma 
and Megna rivers. Hence the Moghul buildings, 
which still confer upon Dacca an historic interest ; 
hence, too, the predominantly Muhammadan 
character of Eastern Bengal, which was a not 
unimportant factor in deciding Lord Curzon’s 
. Government to make of it a separate province in 
1905—a measure which, to the chagrin of the 
Muhammadans of the newly created province, 
was reversed in 1912. 

The founding of this new capital is bathed in 
an atmosphere of romance. In the third year of 
the reign of Jahangir at Delhi, a notable flotilla 
might have been seen ploughing its way eastwards 
through the waters of the Padma river. Great 
craft, manned by as many as one hundred and 
fifty oarsmen, escorted a State barge, from whose 
masthead flew an ensign emblazoned with the 
famous Lion and Sun. Ata spot on the left bank 
of the Buriganga river the fleet came to anchor, 
and from the deck of the royal barge stepped 
ashore Islam Khan, the Viceroy of the Moghul 
emperor. The spot is known to this day as Islam- 
pur, and is a quarter of the modern town. Ere 
he returned to his barge his ear was caught by 
the sound of drums—the dhak of the Hindu— 
and a religious procession came into view. The 
Viceroy was a man of imagination. He recog- 
nised the strategic advantages of the site, and, 
hailing the drummers, formed them up and 
ordered them to play while he despatched men 
east, north, and west, with instructions to each 


232 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


to plant a flagstaff as soon as he was out of ear- 
shot of the drums. Thus with the Buriganga as 
its southern boundary did he fix the limits of the 
future capital, and called it Dhaka (Dacca) or the 
Drum.! 

A century later the capital of Bengal was 
moved once more, this time to Maksusabad, by 
the diwan Murshed Kuli Khan, who re-christened 
the place Murshidabad after his own name, as 
related in Chapter TX. But Dacca has outlived 
Murshidabad, for while the latter is in ruins and 
has a diminishing population, the former received 
a new lease of life when it became the capital of 
Kastern Bengal and Assam in 1905. And though 
its reign as the capital of a province was short- 
lived, it is now the second capital of Bengal, and 
has recently become the seat of a modern univer- 
sity, which opened its doors in 1921. It is there- 
fore an important city, with a great future 
before it. 


1 See an article in the ‘“‘ Dacca Review ”’ for August-September 1914 
by Khan Bahadur Syed Aulad Hasan. 


CHAPTER XIX 
ISLAM IN INDIA 


THE existence of the 70,000,000 Moslems in India 
is the most formidable obstacle in the way of 
those whose battle-cry is * India a nation.’’ The 
startling fact to which attention has already 
been called, that no Muhammadan can have a 
Hindu relation, and vice versa, is an indication of 
the nature of the obstacle. The attachment of 
the Muhammadans to Islam as an institution 
transcending the bounds of country, illustrated 
in the preceding chapter by reference to their 
observance of the Mohurrum, serves as a further 
indication of the manner in which and the extent 
to which the claims of nationality are qualified 
in the case of this large and important section of 
the inhabitants of India. This attachment to 
Islam has had a profound influence upon the 
position of the community in India in recent 
years, for it has been one of the most powerful 
factors militating against their adoption of the 
education given in the schools and _ colleges 
established by Great Britain. The backwardness 
of the Muhammadans in this respect as compared 
with the Hindus is notorious, and has acted as a 
serious handicap in the race for political power. 
The educational ideal of Islam differs markedly 
from that of Europe; in India, owing to the 
attitude of religious neutrality which the Govern- 
ment felt compelled to adopt, the educational 
233 


234 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


courses of the Madrassahs, on the one hand, and 
of the schools and colleges on the other, are as 
the poles asunder. The former are almost entirely 
religious, the latter exclusively secular. The 
whole curriculum of the Madrassah revolves 
round the Koran and the literature of Arabia ; 
its main subjects are Arabic poetry and prose, 
erammar and composition, rhetoric and prosody, 
logic and Muhammadan law, Koranic exegesis 
and criticism, the science of apostolic tradition 
and scholastic theology. It is this course which 
in Islamic countries turns out statesmen and 
administrators, and in Bengal, during the period 
of Muhammadan rule which has been described, 
not only were there Madrassahs all over the 
country staffed with distinguished Arabic scholars 
who devoted their lives to the advancement of 
Islamic learning and taught the theology, law, 
and literature of their faith without remunera- 
tion, but innumerable mosques which were Ma- 
drassahs in miniature. In other words, the 
learning and culture which had blossomed in the 
famous universities of Islam, the great Madrassah 
at Baghdad, and the famous stronghold of 
orthodoxy, al-Azhar, which still survives in Cairo, 
flourished on Indian soil. With the break-up of 
the Muhammadan Empire many of these in- 
stitutions collapsed; there was, however, for 
some time yet a demand for the type of education 
given in the Madrassah, for Persian remained the 
language of the law courts until 1837; and with 
the intention of training Muhammadans as officers 
in the service of the East India Company, Warren 
Hastings himself established a Madrassah in 
Calcutta in 1782. With the discontinuance of 
Persian as the language of the courts in 1837, 
the Madrassahs ceased to serve any practical 


1 See a memorandum by Maulavi Abdul Karim, submitted to the 
Calcutta University Commission. 


ISLAM IN INDIA 235 


purpose beyond that of turning out Islamic 
scholars and divines. It is significant of the 
spell which Islam casts upon its members, that 
in spite of the heroic efforts of far-sighted leaders 
of the community such as Sir Syed Ahmad, 
the founder of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental 
College at Aligarh, which has since become the 
Muhammadan University, the Rt. Hon. Syed 
Ameer Ali, Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk, and others, 
the bulk of the Muhammadans of India still held 
aloof from the schools and colleges which were 
open to them. Even so recently as 1914, a 
committee appointed by the Government of 
Bengal to consider questions connected with 
Muhammadan education, found that wherever 
private Moslem initiative was concerned it tended 
to develop purely Islamic institutions; and the 
result of this attitude was brought to the notice 
of the Calcutta University Commission of 1917-19 
by the Muhammadans of Calcutta, who pointed 
to the fact that although more than half the 
population of the Presidency was Musalman, 
less than 10 per cent of those who received 
university education were Muhammadans. ‘The 
Bengal Government Committee of 1914 attributed 
this attitude of the Moslem community to a 
strong feeling that a separate system of educa- 
tion would preserve their social and religious 
independence. The Calcutta University Com- 
mission endorsed the same view, which had been 
stated even more emphatically by the Indian 
Kducation Commission of 1882. A candid Mu- 
hammadan, in the opinion of that Commission, 
would probably admit that the most powerful 
factors in keeping the majority of Moslems aloof 
from the educational movement of the day were 
pride of race, a memory of bygone superiority, 
religious fears, and a not unnatural attachment 
to the learning of Islam. 


286 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


It has been in no small measure their pride 
in Islam, then, which has kept the Muhammadans 
from throwing in their lot with the Hindus and 
taking advantage of the facilities provided by 
Government for acquiring a liberal education on 
modern Western lines. It has been the same 
influence which has led leaders of the community 
possessing greater political vision to urge upon 
their co-religionists the importance of emancipat- 
ing themselves from their rigid conservatism in 
the matter of education. Yet again it was this 
same thing which threw the whole weight of 
Moslem opinion on to the side of Government 
and cautious progress, when advanced Hindu 
opinion began to demand rapid progress in the 
direction of self-government, still more when talk 
of cutting adrift from Great Britain began to 
be heard. Finally, it was once more the same 
factor which was responsible for the dramatic 
change in the attitude of the community towards 
Great Britain which took place when the curtain 
was rung up on a stage whereon was displayed 
the Turkish Empire, the leading state in the world 
of Islam, ranged up in battle array against Great 
Britain. It is, indeed, this deep attachment on 
the part of the Muhammadans, whether of India 
or elsewhere, to Islam as an institution tran- 
scending all boundaries of race, of language, and 
of country, that is the dominant factor in deter- 
mining their attitude in any given circumstances. 
No one who does not realise this can hope to 
understand their action at times of crisis, still 
less to appreciate in advance the course which 
in any particular circumstances they will be 
likely to pursue. 

The merest sketch of the part played by the 
Muhammadans in the politics of India during 
the past three or four decades is sufficient to make 
this clear. When the Indian National Congress 


ISLAM IN INDIA 237 


was formed in 1885 to advocate Indian Home 
Rule, leading Muhammadans of the day took 
stock of the position, and it was then that a great 
leader came forward to guide his people. Sir 
Syed Ahmad Khan viewed with grave anxiety 
the trend of the new movement. He knew how 
far his own people had lagged behind in the 
sphere of education. He was acutely conscious 
of the dangers of the purely secular education 
of the schools and colleges which Government 
had set up. But he realised also the urgent 
necessity of a break with the rigid educational 
traditions of Islamic orthodoxy if, without sacrific- 
ing its individuality, his community was to play 
a part in the future of the country worthy of 
the historic importance of its past. His call to 
his people was definite and clear. ‘“‘ Concentrate 
upon fitting yourselves for the task which lies 
before you; shun the political catch-cries that 
are ringing in your ears,’ was the slogan with 
which he flung himself into the arena. And the 
first-fruits of his leadership were the Muhammadan 
Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, at which the 
science of the West was combined with the 
moral and religious training of Islam, and an 
annual gathering of the leading men of the 
community under the title of the All-India Mu- 
hammadan Educational Conference. Amongst 
the broader-minded and more far-seeing leaders 
of the community the lamp thus lit by Sir Syed 
Ahmad burned brightly. The Anglo-Oriental 
College at Aligarh did much to further the hopes 
which he cherished; and as recently as 1910, 
when a demand for its expansion into a Moslem 
university was making itself felt, a great and 
cultured leader of the community gave expression 
to aspirations identical with those formulated by 
Sir Syed Ahmad a quarter of a century before. 
Pre-eminent among the questions of the day, 


238 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


declared His Highness the Aga Khan, then 
President of the All-India Moslem League, is 
the foundation of a Muhammadan university at 
Aligarh. The picture which he held up before 
his audience was that of an educational centre 
and intellectual capital to which all Moslems 
should turn for light and guidance. They must 
keep abreast of the knowledge and learning of 
the day, but this in itself was not enough. “ We 
should lay bare before the rising generation the 
treasures concealed in ancient Arabic lore with a 
view to developing the spiritual and emotional 
side of their nature.” The object of such an 
university should not be to gratify mere sentiment 
or vanity. ‘“‘ We believe it to be necessary for 
the true development of our principles and 
ultimate spiritual unity of our faith.” ? And the 
foundation upon which all was to be built up was 
attachment to the enlightened rule of Great 
Britain—” our loyalty to the throne must be 
absolute.”’ 

The necessity for some form of political 
organisation was not lost sight of, and an Anglo- 
Muhammadan Defence Association came into 
existence in Upper India early in the closing 
decade of the nineteenth century. It did not 
survive the death of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in 
1898 ; but the need of such an organisation was 
still felt, and the prospect of an early measure of 
constitutional reform which arose at the end of 
1905 proved to be the stimulus required to bring 
a definitely political organisation into being. 
Following upon the reception by the Viceroy, 
Lord Minto, on October the Ist, 1906, of a re- 
presentative deputation which placed before him 
the views of the community with regard to the 
proposed constitutional reforms, an All-India 
Moslem League was inaugurated at a gathering 

1 Speech at Delhi, January 1910. 2 Ibid. 


ISLAM IN INDIA 239 


of Muhammadans from all parts of India held 
during the latter days of December of the same 
year. Some little time elapsed before the con- 
stitution of the League took final shape; but in 
March 1908 a final draft was ratified, and His 
Highness the Aga Khan elected President. 

The views which the Muhammadan deputation 
placed before the Viceroy in 1906 were those of 
a community acutely conscious of the fact that 
it differed fundamentally in its religious, social, 
and ethical ideals from the majority of the in- 
habitants of the land in which it dwelt; and 
further, that, faced with a movement in the 
direction of the democratic constitutionalism of 
the West, it was in danger of losing that which 
it desired above all things to maintain, namely, 
the individuality which it derived from _ its 
participation in the world of Islam. The problem 
which it propounded was, indeed, a sufficiently 
formidable one. How was a system of govern- 
ment which predicated homogeneity of population 
to be adjusted to meet the case of a population 
whose outstanding characteristic was its hetero- 
geneity ? It was the imminence of this problem 
which brought the All-India Moslem League into 
existence. 

As the mouthpiece of the community, the 
League demanded that Muhammadan interests in 
the new legislatures which it was proposed to set 
up should be entrusted to Muhammadan repre- 
sentatives elected by an exclusively Muhammadan 
electorate ; and declared with an emphasis which 
left no room for ambiguity as to its meaning, that 
no scheme which did not provide for a specified 
number of seats in the said legislatures to be 
filled by Muhammadans so elected would meet 
the necessities of the case. It demanded more. 
It asked that in the event of a Hindu gentleman 
being appointed to the Government of India, a 


240 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


similar honour should be accorded to a Mu- 
hammadan; that the proportion of seats to be 
allotted to the community in the new legislatures 
should be calculated not merely upon its numerical 
strength, but upon a consideration of its political 
and historical importance as well; and finally, 
that in the case of all public bodies to which 
the elective principle might apply—municipal, 
district, and local boards as well as legislative 
councils—the principles demanded in the case 
of the legislatures should be given effect to. 
Nothing could have disclosed more effectively 
than did the vigour and perseverance with which 
these demands were pressed, the cleft between 
the two great sections of the population, or the 
qualifications with which the Indian nationality 
of the Moslems of the continent is hedged around. 

Loyalty to the British Government was still the 
keynote of Muhammadan policy, and was loudly 
proclaimed in the public utterances of its leaders. 
‘“Our attitude towards the British Govern- 
ment is not one merely of loyal acquiescence, 
but of devotion based on a deep-rooted convic- 
tion that God has ordained British rule for the 
welfare of the Indian peoples . . . and on a firm 
belief that the interests of our community and 
of the subject races generally are absolutely 
identical with those of the British Government.” 
Thus Khan Bahadur Sir Mian Muhammad Shafi, 
who later became a member of the Government, 
in a speech in October 1909. And in summing 
up the policy of the Moslem League, he declared, 
**The maintenance on a permanent basis of British 
rule in India and a reasonable measure of self- 
government for the country, with due regard 
to the rights and interests of the various com- 
munities inhabiting the Indian continent, are 
the two chief aims which the Muhammadan com- 
munity has had and will continue to have in 


ISLAM IN INDIA 241 


view.” Similar sentiments were expressed by 
other leaders of the community, stress being laid 
upon the community of interest between Great 
Britain and the world of Islam. The Muham- 
madans of India, declared the Rt. Hon. Syed 
Amir Ali, ‘‘are connected by ties of religion, 
tradition, and race with the whole of Western Asia 
and Northern Africa, right away to the Atlantic— 
countries where the prestige of England stands 
high, and where England is recognised as the 
champion of justice and fair play.’ And it was 
to their pride in Islam that the President of the 
League appealed when he urged his co-religionists 
to take advantage of the facilities offered under 
British rule for their moral and material advance- 
ment. ‘“‘ The community that carried culture to 
the Pyrenees and to Central Asia, the community 
that can still recall with emotional pride the 
greatness of Cordova and Damascus, cannot be 
dead to its sense of duty. I appeal to you with 
all the force in my power to imitate the spirit of 
those who made Toledo and Baghdad, to work 
day in day out for the noble object of elevat- 
ing Moslem life so as to hold forth the highest 
ideals before the younger generation. . .. Let 
our Pole Star be active and unimpeachable 
loyalty to the sovereign and the glory of India 
and of Islam.”’} 

Not all the demands of the Moslem League 
were granted. But the principle of communal 
representation on the legislatures by means of 
separate Muhammadan electorates was conceded, 
and survived the still greater step towards the 
democratic constitutionalism of the West taken 
ten years later, when large changes in the size 
and powers of the legislative councils were made 
by the Reforms Act of 1919. 

1 Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan at Delhi, January the 
29th, 1910. 

R 


242 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Nothing short of an open breach between 
Great Britain and Turkey, the fountain-head of 
Islam, could have changed so completely, as has 
been the case, the attitude of the Muhammadans 
of India towards the British Government, or 
have driven them into alliance with the ex- 
tremists among the Hindu politicians. Fear for 
the future of Islam not only brought into existence 
a Muhammadan extremist party, pledged to work 
in political co-operation with the extreme wing of 
the Indian National Congress, but created a 
feeling of profound disquiet in the minds of more 
moderate men, and eventually, as a result of the 
preaching of the mullahs, stirred the feelings of 
the illiterate masses as well. How fragile was 
the texture of the Hindu-Moslem entente was 
perpetually being demonstrated by the attitude 
of the masses. For all their professions of 
friendship, such episodes as the Shahabad riots of 
the autumn of 1917, when the Hindus, flinging 
themselves upon the Moslems of Bihar, burst 
open the flood-gates of fierce racial and religious 
passions, rankled deep down in the mind of the Mu- 
hammadans, leaving a legacy of bitter memories 
behind. Later, when the Moplah rebellion broke 
out, carrying fire and sword across huge tracts 
in the south-west of the continent, the Hindus 
learned, through the aid of forcible conversions to 
the faith of their persecutors, something of the 
proselytising fanaticism of which Islam is capable. 
Yet, paradoxical though it may seem, the fanati- 
cism of the fierce and uncultured Moplahs and 
the Hindu-Moslem entente of the politicians were 
derived from a common source—a fervid attach- 
ment to Islam. The action of the former was 
fanatical and unreasoning, of the latter deliberate 
and calculated. Amongst the Moslem extremist 
politicians there were undoubtedly men whose 
primary motive was hatred of Western domina- 


ISLAM IN INDIA 243 


tion; but apart from these there was the bulk 
of the educated men of the community which 
found itself gradually being forced, through no 
fault of its own, into a position of extraordinary 
difficulty. With the conclusion of hostilities men 
began to take stock of their position, and upon 
the minds of Indian Muhammadans the fate of 
Turkey as one of the vanquished nations began 
to prey. The task of reconciling the claims of 
secular loyalty to a Christian power with the 
equally insistent claims of religious loyalty to 
Turkey became for all a formidable and distract- 
ing one, and for some insuperable. 

Any detailed narrative of the events leading 
up to the formation of the Indian Khilafat party 
for the protection of Islam, or of the widespread 
agitation conducted under its auspices, would be 
beyond the scope of this volume. A single 
episode will suffice to indicate the strained state 
of feeling amongst the community, and to illus- 
trate what has been said as to the extent to which 
the attitude of the Moslems of India is influenced 
by a consciousness of their organic relationship to 
Islam. 

As the War dragged on, the embers of discontent 
smouldering in the Muhammadan mind glowed 
more brightly. The least breath proved capable 
of fanning them into flame. In the Nakhoda 
mosque in Calcutta the Imam, Ahmad Musa 
Misri, an Egyptian known far beyond the confines 
of India, when he led the faithful in prayer at the 
weekly Friday service, prayed ostentatiously for 
the welfare of the Turkish caliph. Many little 
things went to show that the nerves of Moslem 
India were on edge, and in the late summer of 
1918 a little breeze, which in more normal times 
would have passed unnoticed, blew upon the 
embers and kindled them into flame. A de- 
scriptive paragraph in a newspaper, which to an 


244 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


impartial reader was wholly innocent of offence, 
was held by the Muhammadans who read it to 
contain an implication insulting to the memory 
of the Prophet. A misleading translation in Urdu 
was widely circulated, and all true Moslems were 
called on to rise and avenge this insult to their 
religion. The editors of the Muhammadan ver- 
nacular press ran amok with pens dipped in gall, 
and day after day lashed the feelings of their 
readers with column after column of vitriolic 
writing. Meetings were held at which over- 
wrought speakers gave vent to their pent-up feel- 
ings without restraint. Resolutions were passed 
pledging those who supported them to protect the 
honour of Islam, and calling upon Government to 
take action against those who were held to have 
insulted the memory of the Prophet. 

The paragraph complained of had appeared at 
the end of July. By the end of August the 
pulse of the Moslem community was throbbing 
feverishly far beyond the confines of Bengal, and 
a plan was evolved by the leaders of the agitation 
for the holding of a great gathering in Calcutta 
early in September to be addressed by learned 
Maulanas from all parts of India, and to extend 
over three days. Leaflets in the vernacular were 
circulated broadcast, in which it was stated that 
at different places insults had been offered to 
Islam and its Prophet; that the time had arrived 
when it was necessary to state to Government that 
“the waters had risen too high,’’ and that ‘the 
cup of patience was already full,” that steps must 
be taken without delay “‘ to prevent these unholy 
attacks and accursed occurrences’; and that 
Ulemas (learned men), Maulavis, Supis (spiritual 
leaders), and National leaders would attend a 
meeting which all Brothers of Islam should take 
part in to consider proposals for the protection of 
their J.oly Religion. On September the Ist the 


ISLAM IN INDIA 245 


Secretary of the Committee formed to organise the 


. demonstration stated that 1200 invitations to 


Ulemas and other leading men had already been 
sent out. 

Below the surface, and notably amongst the 
huge illiterate labouring population that lives 
and labours in the mills in the environs of 
Calcutta, propaganda of a still more sinister 
character was being carried on. Men were being 
urged to remember the Shahabad riots of the 
previous autumn, and amid a storm of angry 
mutterings the ominous word jihad was to be 
heard being bandied from mouth to mouth. The 
masses were being shaken by one of those violent 
spasms of racial and religious excitement which 
are apt to sweep across the deep waters of Indian 
life with such disconcerting rapidity. And by an 
unfortunate coincidence the Bakr-id, the great 
feast of the Muhammadans, involving on a large 
scale the sacrifice of the cow, and the Durga Puja, 
the greatest of all the festivals of the Hindus of 
Bengal, fell at the same time and were imminent. 
It required little wisdom to perceive that in 
such circumstances the holding of a huge demon- 
stration such as was proposed must be attended 
with the risk of grave consequences. And since 
the organisers of the movement refused to accept 
the advice tendered to them to postpone the 
gathering until after the celebration of the reli- 
gious festivals, when a calmer atmosphere might 
be expected to prevail, Government was com- 
pelled to step in and prohibit the demonstration. 

It was scarcely to be expected that in an 
atmosphere so highly charged the storm which 
had gathered should pass altogether harmlessly 
by. For a day or two there were outbreaks of 
rioting in the town, and an attempt was made 
by a fanatical mob of mill hands from one of 
the adjacent areas to force one of the military 


246 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


pickets which were holding the approaches to the 
town. Some firing, resulting in some loss of life, 
was unfortunately unavoidable before normal 
conditions were restored. 

The deeper causes of this threatening outbreak 
were never in doubt. They were emphasised in 
the course of a prolonged interview held, owing 
to the urgency of the times, late at night between 
myself and some of the Ulemas who had come 
from other parts of India to take part in the 
proceedings. My visitors laid stress upon the 
fact that they were not politicians but religious 
leaders of the people, concerned only with the 
safeguarding of the religion whose care was their 
sacred charge. They said that on such an 
occasion that which was rankling deep in their 
hearts should be openly spoken. It had seemed 
to them that for some time past the attitude of 
Government towards their community had grown 
cold. This was all the more galling in that it 
suggested that their loyalty under circumstances 
of the greatest difficulty was but lightly valued 
by Great Britain. The representations of the 
All-India Ulema deputation on the subject of the 
impending constitutional changes seemed to them 
to have been ignored. Did not this point to a 
cynical indifference on the part of Government 
towards their views? And at a time when this 
unfortunate impression was gaining ground in 
the minds of the leaders of the community a 
number of incidents had occurred—the Shahabad 
riots and the alleged insults to Islam were given as 
examples—which had deeply stirred the feelings 
of the masses. However strong their attach- 
ment to the British throne, loyalty to Islam 
must always be their first and paramount con- 
sideration. 

Throughout these pages I have sought to 
avoid writing of things which are, in essence, 


ISLAM IN INDIA 247 


ephemeral. In this instance I have made use 
. of a passing episode for purposes of illustration. 
That which I desired to illustrate was the strength 
of the call of Islam—a call which rings insistently 
in the ears of the devout Moslem, whether of 
India or elsewhere, drowning the call of country 
and all else. The particular incident of which 
I have made use is all the more valuable as an 
illustration, in that it occurred before the uprising 
in the Punjab which some months later was to 
give so powerful an impetus to anti-Government 
agitation throughout the land. 

I do not, of course, suggest that the great mass 
of Muhammadan peasants, if left to themselves, 
would have known anything of events in Turkey, 
or, if they had, would have been unduly stirred 
by the probable fate of that country. As a 
Muhammadan gentleman once said to me, “As 
long as the Khutbah is recited after the name of 
the Sultan of Turkey as caliph, the ordinary 
man will not worry over the fate of that country.” 
But the masses follow blindly the lead of their 
mullahs, and the mullahs take their cue from 
those at the top of the religious hierarchy ; and 
those at the top know well enough that the one 
ery above all others that can be counted on to 
rally the masses of their people is the cry of 
‘* Islam in danger.” 


CHAPTER XX 
THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA 


On all sides of him the visitor sees evidence of 
the extent to which religion enters into the daily 
life of the people. ‘Temples and mosques abound ; 
and the calendar is strewn with festivals and fasts 
of all kinds—Hindu and Muhammadan—many 
of which are officially recognised by the days on 
which they take place being proclaimed as 
Government holidays. In a chart of the monthly 
festivals Mr. Underhill mentions over two hundred 
and sixty Hindu celebrations alone.t1 Something 
has been said in the preceding chapter of the 
religious discipline of Islam. But the ritual of 
Islam does not differ in essentials from that of 
Christianity. Both, being monotheistic, have 
evolved a form of worship appropriate to the 
basic belief on which they rest—differing in detail, 
certainly, but similar in kind. 

It is when one visits the temples raised up to 
the religions which have been born upon the soil of 
India itself that one is struck, and at first puzzled, 
by the nature of the observances which one sees. 
In the Jain temples on Mount Abu, I have seen 
ascetics sweeping the ground in front of them as 
they walked, and ministrants in the same temples 
carrying through their celebrations with cloths 
bound over their mouths. Here one is brought 

1 * The Hindu Religious Year,” by M. M. Underhill. 
248 


THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA 249 


into contact with a great principle running 
“through much of the religious thought of India, 
and exalted in particular by the Buddhists and 
the Jains—that of ahimsa, literally harmlessness, 
but connoting a deep reverence for the life 
principle and a spirit of extreme loving kind- 
ness, consequently, to all animated beings. The 
binding of a cloth over the mouth during the 
performance of certain rites is to guard 
against the destruction of the life principle in 
the air by inhaling it, and the sweeping of the 
path is similarly for the purpose of brushing aside 
any insect upon which the walker might other- 
wise tread. For the same reason a Jain will care 
for vermin upon his own person with the greatest 
punctiliousness. 

The number of Jains in India to-day is com- 
paratively small, about 1,250,000 in all. The 
vast majority of the population—somewhere 
about 220,000,000—is recorded at each census as 
Hindu. But if it be asked what constitutes a 
Hindu, no definite answer can be given. Hindu- 
ism as a religion is not comparable with Chris- 
tianity or Muhammadanism, or even, in this 
respect, with Jainism or Buddhism, for it claims 
no founder propounding a faith for the salvation 
of mankind ; and there is no agreement amongst 
Hindus themselves as to what is essential in a man 
calling himself a Hindu. The word Hinduism 
itself finds no place in the ancient Sanskrit texts 
of the Aryans; and so tolerant has it proved 
itself of religious beliefs, that it has been admitted 
to contain “ doctrines and modes of worship from 
the lowest fetishism to the sublimest ideas of the 
Godhead.” Another well-known Hindu has 
defined the term negatively as applicable to all 
inhabitants of India who are not Christians or 
Muhammadans or Parsis or Sikhs or Jains or 

1 By Babu Sarada Charan Mitra. 


250 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Buddhists; and he has amplified his definition 
by stating that it includes in its widest acceptance 
“the most sublime conceptions of Indian sages 
with regard to God and the soul, as well as 
debasing superstitions of half-savage tribes living 
in the forests.’’1 Others have been more definite, 
and have laid down certain beliefs as essential to 
any one professing Hinduism—for example, belief 
in the immortality of the soul, in the doctrine of 
Karma, in the transmigration of the soul until it 
attains Moksha (salvation), and in the possibility 
of attaining Moksha in any of several recognised 
ways, namely, Karma or virtuous action, Bhakti 
or devotion to God, Jndna or the attainment of 
knowledge of the true nature of things by medita- 
tion.2 Many hold that a belief in the Vedas as 
inspired writings is essential, but I think that the 
two fundamental and almost universal beliefs 
characteristic of Hinduism are the doctrine of 
Karma and transmigration, or the tenet that as a 
man sows so he reaps here and hereafter through 
countless inecarnations—of which more later; and 
the possibility of release from re-birth, the 
achievement of which may be said, indeed, to 
be the supreme object of the Hindu religion. 
Certain it is that most Hindu practices are based 
upon the theory of successive lives conditioned 
by acts in the present and the past; and for this 
reason another prominent Hindu, the late Mr. V. 
Krishnaswami Iyer, has asserted that he could 
not conceive of a follower of Hinduism who 
repudiated Karma and reincarnation. Every 
educated Hindu would likewise subscribe, I think, 
to the existence of the three roads along which it 
is open to a man to travel on his quest of the 
supreme goal: Karma-mdarga, the path of works, 
which in its religious aspect amounts to a strict 


1 Rao Bahadur K. Ramanujachari. 
2 The late Mr. Justice P. R. Sundara Aiyar. 


THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA 251 


observance of ritual; Bhakti-mdrga, the way 
-of complete devotion to God, when a man, 
having trodden the Karma-mdarga, devotes him- 
self to an ecstatic adoration of the deity; 
and finally, Jndna-mdrga, the path of know- 
ledge, when, having finished with the things 
of this world, he becomes a Sannyasi, his 
mind thenceforward cut off entirely from all 
sensuous things and from all desire—even for his 
own future—and fixed solely upon the Absolute 
Brahman. 

The visitor will see numberless persons in the 
guise of Sannyasis, but for the most part these 
will not be true ascetics treading the real road 
of knowledge, but caricatures of the genuine 
Sannyasi engaged, as often as not, in living a life 
of idleness at the expense of a long-suffering 
public. It is in the nature of things that the 
particular aspect of the religious life of India 
which is most apparent on the surface is that of 
the Karma-mdarga—the rites and practices of the 
masses: that which, in a word, may be described 
as popular Hinduism. The Hinduism which 
occupies so large a part of the daily life of millions 
of people may be seen in practice almost any- 
where—at the great melas (religious fairs) which 
take place all over the country, in any one of 
the thousands of temples to Vishnu or Shiva 
which dot the land, or at some great centre of 
pilgrimage such as Benares in the north, Madura 
or Conjeeveram, or, indeed, at any of a number of 
famous religious centres in the south of India 
or at Puri in Orissa. It is at this latter place 
that there rise, not far from the blue waters of 
the Bay of Bengal, the spires of the great temple 
of Jaganath to which pilgrims flock from all 
quarters of India, and notably at midsummer, 
when the famous car of Jaganath is drawn by 
thousands of devotees along the broad highway 


252 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


which runs for over a mile from the temple in 
the town to the garden retreat in which, for a 
space of eight days, the image of the god 
reposes. 

Of the surrounding country it might well be 
said—to the Hindu, at any rate—‘ Put off the 
shoes from oif thy feet, for the ground whereon 
thou standest is holy ground.” Within a day’s 
journey of the great pilgrim city are to be seen 
outstanding milestones marking out, over a period 
of more than two millenniums, the road along which 
India has travelled in her diligent and unceasing 
quest of the unknown. In the ruins of ancient 
temples which cover the land, one sees stretching 
across the centuries stage after stage of the 
journey pursued by her with dogged persistence 
in her search after God. Great figures of the 
past have left their mark upon the land. The 
hermitages of ancient monastic orders cluster in 
the hillsides ; immense temples raise their spires 
towards heaven ; the commands of famous kings, 
deep graven in the enduring rocks, ring down 
the corridors of time to arrest the attention of 
the passer-by to-day. 

If from Puri one travels thirty miles north to 
Bhubaneswar, a city of great temples, and on 
from there another four miles in a south-western 
direction, one comes, near the village of Dhauli, 
to two parallel ridges thrown up like folds in the 
plain, and at a spot on the north face of the 
southernmost of the two, one finds one’s gaze 
attracted to the head of an elephant hewn out 
of one end of an outcrop of rock four or five feet 
in height. Closer inspection discloses the fact 
that the elephant stands guardian over a polished 
slab of rock some fifteen feet in length, on which is 
eraven an inscription in three columns. The 
historic interest of this message from the distant 
past was made known by the genius of one 





Plate 20. 


A HInNbDv ASCETIC, 


‘The visitor will see numberless persons in the guise ot saxnyasts, but for the most part 


” 


these will not be true ascetics treading the road of knowledge but caricatures... 











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A ae : t ' : } bik ta ‘“- : a4 
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THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA 253 


James Prinsep, who succeeded in deciphering it 
in 1838. We are in the presence here of the 
famous edicts of Asoka, the great missionary 
emperor of the Maurya dynasty, who made of 
Buddhism a world religion. We are gazing upon 
the commands of a great monarch graven by his 
orders upon this same rock more than two 
thousand one hundred and seventy years ago. I 
have recalled elsewhere the fact that it was 
remorse at the misery caused during his conquest 
of the kingdom of Kalinga—which embraced the 
modern district of Puri—that turned the heart 
of Asoka towards the teaching of Buddha.! 
The awful loss of life and the king’s remorse are 
referred to in Edict XIII. of the general edicts, 
and it is interesting to find that this edict is 
omitted from the Dhauli inscription. Edict XIV. 
contains the statement that “ this set of dhamma 
edicts has been written by command of the King 
Piyadasi (Asoka), beloved of the gods, in a 
form sometimes condensed, sometimes of medium 
length, sometimes expanded, for everything is 
not suitable in every place, and my dominions 
are extensive.” It was evidently not considered 
suitable that the devastating war by which 
Kalinga had been brought under subjection of 
the Maurya empire should be referred to in an 
inscription of the edicts within that territory. 
On the other hand, the Dhauli rock contains the 
special edicts addressed not to the public but 
to the king’s officers, which are not found in- 
scribed with the general edicts elsewhere except 
at Jangada in the adjoining district. Briefly, 
they are an instruction to his officers to see that 
the people of the newly conquered territory are 
not oppressed. The date of the Kalinga edicts 
is believed to be 256 B.c. Here, then, is an 
arresting milestone upon the way. 
_ #2 See *‘ Lands of the Thunderbolt,” chap. xxiii. 


254 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


For another we have not to go far; for if 
from Bhubaneswar we travel some three miles to 
the north-west, we shall find ourselves at the foot 
of a low three-peaked hill rising to a height of 
120 feet from a rolling stretch of arid laterite. 
The hill itself and the approaches to it are well 
wooded, mangoes, bamboos, and other forest 
trees affording welcome shelter from the rays of 
a burning sun. Its three peaks bear the names 
of Udayagiri or the sunrise hill, Khandagiri or 
the broken hill, and Nilgiri or the blue hill. The 
whole ridge is honeycombed with caves. In all 
there are sixty-six, the haunt during the centuries 
immediately preceding the Christian era of a 
flourishing colony of Jain monks. Amongst the 
carvings, which cover a wide range of subjects 
both secular and religious, is the image of Pars- 
vanath and his symbol the serpent hood, an 
early preacher of whom little is known, but who 
is reputed, according to the chronicles of the 
Jains, to have lived two hundred and fifty years 
before Mahavira, and therefore seven hundred 
and fifty years before Christ. Here, too, there 
is an inscription of no small historic interest. It 
is engraven upon the smooth surface of the roof 
rock of a cave on Udayagiri, known as the Hati- 
gumpha or elephant cave. It is dated the 16th 
year of the Mauryan era, and is a record of the 
reign of King Kharavela of Kalinga during the 
second century B.c., ascribing to him the title of 
Mahameghavahana—one whose elephant is as big 
as a large cloud. The tables of the previous 
century were turned, for Khiaravela is depicted 
as a powerful monarch who invaded Magadah, 
and, penetrating to Pataliputra, the capital of the 
empire, compelled the emperor to acknowledge 
his independence. 

Bhubaneswar is another distinct milestone on 
the road. Its immense collection of temples— 


THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA 255 


there are still about one hundred—were built 
between the eighth and twelfth centuries a.D., at 
a time, that is to say, when circumstances were 
favourable to a great flowering of creative art. 
Architecturally they are elaborate, and in many 
cases vast. They are the product of a sectarian 
and an emotional age. At the time of their 
construction, Buddhism had lost its individuality, 
and had become more and more merged in 
Hinduism. The twilight period, marked by its 
decay as a living faith, when scepticism had 
struck a fatal blow at its roots and its lofty 
ethical teaching had been corroded by an erotic 
mysticism, had passed, and the era of religious 
fervour ushered in with the revival of Hinduism 
had set in. The emotional faith and devotion to 
the deity, characteristic of the Puranic renaissance, 
gave to these centuries that artistic importance 
which has led Mr. Havell, contrary to many 
Western critics, to describe them as “ the great 
period of Indian art corresponding to the highest 
development of Gothic art in Kurope,’’? by whose 
achievements ‘“‘ India’s place in the art history 
of the world will eventually be resolved.” } 
‘* Moral principles, self-discipline, and introspec- 
tion, the watchwords of Buddhism, were thrown 
into the background, and faith in God became 
the motto and the catchword of the Puranik 
renaissance.’ ? 

The visitor to-day is at once struck by the 
form of the great central towers which dominate 
the courtyards of the temples and which have 
given their distinctive character to the religious 
buildings of Orissa. They compel one’s gaze 
from afar, and have excited the admiration of 
all who have beheld them. Of the great tower 


1 “ The Ideals of Indian Art,” by E. B. Havell. 
2 “History of Bengali Language and Literature,” by Rai Bahadur 
Dinesh Chandra Sen. 


256 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


of the Linga-raj temple, the central building of 
Bhubaneswar, Mr. Havell has said that “ for 
purity of outline and dignity of its rich but 
unobtrusive decoration, as well as for its superb 
technique, the Linga-raj Sikhara must rank as 
one of the greatest works of the Indian builder.” 
Nor is the purity of outline, which strikes one 
from afar, the only outstanding feature of this 
wonderful building. Closer inspection of the 
temples of Bhubaneswar discloses the fact that 
immense surfaces of stone are literally covered 
with minutely elaborate carving. So much so 
that another authority, Mr. Ferguson, has said of 
this feature of the tower of Linga-raj, that “ if 
it would take, say, a lakh of rupees to erect such 
a building as this, it would take three lakhs to 
carve it as this one is carved.’ And he has added, 
what must be apparent to every one who visits 
these remarkable buildings, that “‘ infinite labour 
bestowed on every detail was the mode in which 
he (the Hindu) thought he could render his temple 
most worthy of the deity ; and whether he was 
right or wrong, the effect of the whole is certainly 
marvellously beautiful.” 

I have visited Bhubaneswar more than once, 
and each time as I have wandered from one 
temple to another, and gazed fascinated upon 
these amazing examples of man’s handiwork, I 
have been struck with the same thought—the 
tremendous force of the impulse which has im- 
pelled him to devote so much labour, so much 
time, so much treasure, and such concentrated 
care to giving expression in wood and stone to 
the visions of his spiritual eye. 

Yet another milestone of the Puranic age now 
stands in splendid isolation twenty miles up the 
coast from the town of Puri. The great black 
temple of Konarak, dedicated to Surya, the Sun 
god, is one of the most stupendous buildings in 


THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA 257 


India, and rears itself aloft, a pile of overwhelming 
‘grandeur even in its decay. At the present day 
the great highways pass it by—a striking re- 
minder of the alterations which have taken place 
in the configuration of the country since the days 
when, seven centuries ago, at the command of 
King Narasinhadeva, twelve hundred carpenters 
and masons worked for sixteen years upon its 
construction. And it is, consequently, somewhat 
difficult of access. In a straight line up the coast 
it is probably not more than twenty miles from 
Puri; but by road it is nearer fifty. For twenty- 
five miles we travelled along the famous pilgrim 
road along which at certain seasons of the year 
stream families of pious Hindus on their way to 
the great shrine of Jaganath. We then turned 
off, and for the next eighteen or twenty miles 
bumped over a country cart-track, and finally 
for six miles over what is known as a fair-weather 
road, t.e. a track across fields, which is a track 
during the slack season on the land only, being 
absorbed in the fields themselves when the crops 
are sown. At last we ran into the sandy soil 
upon which the temple stands, and the huge mass 
of its central building, representing the chariot of 
the sun, burst upon our gaze. It is profusely 
ornamented with sculpture—some of it of the 
curious erotic type which to the European seems 
so strangely incongruous in any place of worship, 
but some of it of a more edifying character, 
including some fine figures of the Sun God 
carved in deep relief in panels of green chlorite. 
At intervals round the base of the building 
are beautifully carved stone wheels. Detached 
groups of sculpture, consisting of figures of 
elephants, lions, and horses, stand facing the 
various entrances to the main building. To those 
who worshipped here it must have made an 
immense appeal; but it has equally elicited 
S 


258 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


admiration from those having no sympathy with 
the beliefs to which it was raised up. Writing 
of it in his Ain-i-Akbari, Abu Fazl said: ‘‘ Near 
Jaganath is a temple dedicated to the Sun. Its 
cost was defrayed by twelve years’ revenue of 
the Province. Even those whose judgment is 
critical, and who are difficult to please, stand 
astonished at its sight.’’? The crowning stone slab 
of the temple is 25 feet thick, and is estimated to 
weigh not less than 2000 tons. Preserved within 
a shed close by is a massive architrave, with 
images of the nine planets, an immense cube 
3 feet square and 19 feet in length, which was 
originally supported in its position over the 
eastern doorway by an iron beam 22 feet 10 inches 
in length and 10 inches square. The stone must 
have been brought from great distances, for there 
are no quarries near the site of the temple, and, 
in the case of the first of these two pieces, must 
have been hoisted up, at a prodigious expense of 
labour, on to the summit of a tower which was 
probably 190 feet high. This in itself was no 
mean feat, over the accomplishment of which the 
engineer of to-day may puzzle his head; but for 
the layman, the chief interest of this, as of the 
many other buildings which lie scattered over the 
land, will be the strength of the religious im- 
pulse which impelled men to devote so vast an 
amount of time, labour, and treasure to their 
construction. 

Finally, there is the great temple of Jaganath 
at Puri itself, a collection of buildings within a 
high-walled enclosure nearly 650 feet square, 
dominated by an immense tower 190 feet high, 
similar in design to those of the temple of Lingaraj 
at Bhubaneswar and of other Orissan temples. 
The images representing the gods are curiously 
unworthy of so magnificent an abode. They 
consist, in fact, of logs of wood crudely carved to 


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THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA 259 


represent Krishna under his title of Jaganath, 
“Lord of the World,’ Balabhadra his brother, 
and Subhadra his sister. So crude is the carving 
that they appeared to Mr. B. K. Ghose, the 
author of a volume entitled the ** History of 
Pooree,’”’ as ‘“‘ bulky, hideous wooden busts.” 
The two brothers, he said, had arms “ projecting 
horizontally forward from the ears.’ The sister 
did not possess “‘ even that approximation to the 
human form.” There is, of course, an explana- 
tion of this strangely inadequate representation 
of so powerful and popular a divinity ; and it has 
been extracted from the myths and traditions 
current about the place by the Abbé Dubois. 
Indra-mena, the mythical builder of the temple, 
had been told by Brahma that on the completion 
of the building Krishna would appear on the sea- 
shore in the guise of a tree-trunk. In due course 
the prophecy was fulfilled, and Indra-mena, the 
king, having worshipped the tree-trunk which had 
miraculously appeared, placed himself at the head 
of a hundred thousand men, and conveyed it with 
great pomp and ceremony to the shrine within 
the temple. The famous carpenter, Visvakarma, 
next appeared upon the scene, and undertook to 
carve the image of Krishna out of it in a single 
night, provided that no prying eye was permitted 
to be a witness of his work. Visvakarma worked 
so silently that the king’s curiosity was aroused, 
and he peeped in through a chink in the door. 
This lapse on his part was disastrous, for Visva- 
karma, discovering that he was being watched, 
left the work little more than begun, and departed 
never to return. 

This uncouth image of Jaganath contains an 
article about which there is considerable mystery. 
The image itself is renewed from time to time, 
and it is at the consecration of a new one that 
the mystery comes into prominence. Various 


260 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


accounts have been given of this ceremony, the 
most reliable being, in all probability, that of 
the Manager of the Temple, supplied to Mr. L. 
S. S. O’Malley for incorporation in the district 
gazetteer. According to this account, the un- 
known article, called the Brahma-padartha, is trans- 
ferred from the old image to the new by a priest, 
who is blindfolded and whose hands are swathed 
in cloth, so that he may neither see nor touch 
the sacred article. 

The Abbé Dubois, who is responsible for the 
story of the origin of the images given above, is 
also responsible for perpetuating the stories told 
by early European travellers of the fanatical 
suicide of pilgrims by throwing themselves under 
the wheels of the ponderous chariots, in which the 
images are dragged from the temple in the town 
to the garden temple a mile or more away, at the 
time of the Rath Jatra festival. Whence the 
incorporation in the idiom of the English language 
of the phrase, “a car of Jaganath.” Cases of 
accident, when in the crush of pilgrims straining 
to catch sight of the god persons have been 
knocked down and run over, there undoubtedly 
have been. But wild statements, such as that of 
Bernier in 1667, that “‘ persons are found so 
blindly credulous and so full of wild notions as 
to throw themselves on the ground in the way of 
its ponderous wheels, which pass over and crush 
to atoms the wretched fanatics,” are now gener- 
ally discredited. The car festival is the greatest 
and most popular of all the observances connected 
with the worship of Krishna. It commemorates 
the victorious drive of Krishna and his brother 
from Gokul to Mathura, where the divine hero 
slew Kansa, the demon king of Mathura, who 
stood for the principle of evil. It is attended by 
vast crowds of pilgrims and sightseers, numbering 
from fifty to a hundred thousand. The town is 


THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA 261 


the scene of a large number of festivals throughout 
the year, the one which I have seen myself being 
the Holi, which takes place in the month of 


Phalgun, corresponding to February-March of the 
Knglish calendar. 


CHAPTER XXI 
POPULAR HINDUISM 


TuE Holi, the great spring festival, which in 
varying forms is celebrated all over India, pro- 
vides an occasion, so far as the lower orders are 
concerned, for ribald and boisterous merry- 
making. The feature of the observance which at 
once attracts the notice of the onlooker is the 
indiscriminate throwing of red powder and the 
squirting from syringes of a red liquid, much as 
confetti is thrown at the mi-caréme amongst the 
Latin races of Europe. For days after the 
celebration men may be seen going about with 
their white cotton clothes still stained with 
patches of scarlet or magenta. This display is 
accompanied by the singing of songs and the 
shouting of language in the streets which it 
requires no great intelligence on the part of the 
onlooker, even though unacquainted with the 
vernacular, to recognise as obscene. 

In some parts of India the celebration of the 
Holi is combined with another ritual, namely, the 
swinging of images of Radha and Krishna in 
specially constructed swings. At Puri and in the 
villages around, the swings are of an elaborate 
character, the structure from which they hang 
being an ornamental archway of carved stone 
standing upon a raised stone plinth. Let me 
give a brief description of the setting of this great 
spring festival as I witnessed it at Puri, and then 

262 


POPULAR HINDUISM 263 


try to interpret what at first sight appears to be 
“a not very intelligible display of buffoonery. 

Large numbers of pilgrims have come into the 
town for the festival, and the streets and open 
spaces—to say nothing of the beach, where bathing 
is In progress—are thronged with a good-natured 
holiday crowd. The main thoroughfare, leading 
up to the square in front of the great temple, is 
lined with booths at which great quantities of 
the red powder thrown by the holiday-makers is 
on sale. Because there are many pilgrims in the 
town, there are also many sadhus. I have been 
to Puri on many occasions, but have never seen 
so many sadhus as now. These are not genuine 
sannyasis treading the “path of knowledge ”’ ; 
on the contrary, they are ignorant persons who 
are obviously here for gain—mountebanks who 
provide the side-shows of the fair. But even 
here one obtains an insight into the trend of 
Indian thought. These side-shows, though cari- 
catures, are caricatures of that which India 
reverences and admires —renunciation, asceti- 
cism, mortification of the flesh. 

There is a narrow winding street which runs 
from the square in front of the temple of Jaganath 
away through the town—a long street, which for 
some distance runs between houses and shrines 
with picturesque lintels of carved wood, but 
later broadens out between walled enclosures and 
stretches of open waste land, before losing itself 
eventually in some rough ground giving on to 
the beach. It bears the attractive name, during 
some part of its length at any rate, of “* Paradise 
Gate.” It is this street which appears to be the 
favourite haunt of the sadhu, and the heat and 
dusty discomfort of a walk along it were more 
than compensated on this occasion by the novelty 
of the sights which it held in store. 

One of the first examples of self-mortification 


264 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


which we encountered was that of a gentleman, 
with little to cover his nakedness beyond a 
coating of wood ash smeared all over his body, 
standing motionless upside down. ‘The posture 
must certainly have been one of considerable 
discomfort. His whole weight rested on his head 
and elbows, the hardness of the ground being 
mitigated only, if at all, by a leopard skin spread 
upon the street. His legs were crossed in the 
air and the sun beat down upon him with un- 
relenting fierceness. It was said that he had 
already been in this unconventional posture for 
two hours. Farther along, another exponent of 
the doctrine of the mortification of the flesh 
reposed upon a bed of spikes. He had been lying 
thus in the sun for three hours. But the most 
popular practice appeared to be that of being 
buried alive. On patches of waste land along 
the road were rows of human arms which had 
the appearance of strange plants growing from 
the soil. These marked the graves of living 
sidhus, the object being, so far as I could gather, 
to illustrate the efficacy of the system of breathing 
which forms part of the training of a Yogi—a 
training which, it is claimed, ends by giving a 
man complete control over all the functions of the 
body. We took hold of one such pair of protruding 
hands whose owner allowed us willingly enough to 
raise him up from his temporary grave. He had 
been buried, we were told, for half an hour. Into 
other such hands we placed small coins. These, too, 
so far as we could judge, were accepted gratefully. 
Besides performing sadhus, there were numbers of 
ordinary beggars, containing a large sprinkling of 
the maimed, the halt, and the blind, exhibiting 
their physical imperfections for the purpose of 
exciting the compassion of the passer-by. 

We completed our inspection of the outward 
and visible signs of the Holi festival when we 


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POPULAR HINDUISM 265 


witnessed the swinging of Krishna in an open 
space not far from the temple. 

The disentanglement of the meaning of these 
observances is not rendered easier by the varia- 
tions in the ritual in different parts of India, and 
the confused medley of legends which has gradu- 
ally become associated with the festival in the 
minds of the people. But there seems little 
reason to doubt that the origin of the festival is 
to be traced back to very early days, when 
primitive man sought to give expression to the 
feelings of exaltation which he experienced at 
that season of the year when the pulse of life is 
quickened and all animate existence receives a 
stimulus towards growth and reproduction. The 
Indian month of Phalgun—itself signifying fructi- 
fier—falls at the time of the vernal equinox, when 
the sun with its life-giving warmth is well on its 
northward course, a season at which a quickened 
vitality stirs the emotional impulses which seek 
expression in love and worship. In its earliest 
form the festival was, in fact, nothing more than 
man’s welcome to returning spring, and it is 
referred to in early Sanskrit poetry as Basanta- 
utsava, or the Festival of Spring. The universal 
tendency of primitive man to endow anything 
which called forth his worship with his own 
image would of itself be sufficient to account for 
the intrusion of a personality into a celebration 
which began as a mere expression of gratification 
at the effects of a seasonal change. The nature 
of the personality would naturally enough be 
determined by the type of worship called forth. 
The feelings of joy and gladness excited by 
seasonal change at the time of spring, having their 
root in a quickening of the physical organism 
and a consequent impulse towards reproduction, 
would inevitably suggest a god of love; and one 
would expect what, in fact, one finds, namely, 


266 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


mention in the ancient poetic and dramatic 
literature of another festival, the Madana-utsava, 
or Festival of the Indian Cupid. 

Festivals such as the Basanta-utsava and the 
Madana-utsava, containing, as they did, such 
obvious elements of popularity, were not likely to 
be cast aside by theologians bent upon popularis- 
ing their own particular sect; and the Holi in 
its present form seems to be the outcome of 
sectarian effort of this kind. The cult of Krishna, 
with its origin deep-rooted in the great epic of 
India, the Mahabharata, was seized upon by 
Vaishnavite theologians, who in their handling of 
the Puranas —those famous religious poems which 
for centuries past have been the Bible of the 
people —evolved an idyll which gripped the 
popular imagination. With Krishna the very 
incarnation of love, little difficulty was to be 
expected in absorbing the primitive festivals and 
re-incarnating them as an episode in the idyll 
which served as so admirable a vehicle of sectarian 
teaching. In the Puranas, Krishna becomes the 
hero of an incident which is now generally 
accepted as the particular event the memory of 
which is perpetuated by the Holi festival. 

The story is of the Saint George and the Dragon 
order. A she-demon named Holi or Holika 
scourged the land of the Jumna, devouring 
children, each family in the stricken area having 
to take its turn in sacrificing a child to the blood- 
lust of the monster. From this scourge Krishna 
delivered the people, vanquishing the demon and 
her armies on the banks of the Jumna. Here 
one finds a clue to the significance of the red 
powder scattered broadcast at the time of the 
celebration. It is symbolical of the sands of the 
Jumna stained red with the blood of the demon 
whom Krishna slew; while the swinging of 
Krishna as a method of celebrating his victory 


POPULAR HINDUISM 267 


may well be derived from the prevalence of this 
particular form of merry-making at the earlier 
and more primitive celebrations. 

There remains the practice of shouting obscene 
language to be accounted for. This custom dates 
back in all probability to the early pre-Hindu 
days of the primitive spring festival, for a belief 
in the efficacy of obscene acts and language in 
warding off evil spirits was, apparently, common 
amongst primitive peoples ; and the season when 
the thoughts of men were turning expectantly 
towards a quickening of the great life principle 
in the animal and vegetable world alike would 
naturally be one at which fears of famine would 
be mingled with hopes of abundance, and when 
precautions would, consequently, be taken to 
guard against the advent of evil influences bent 
upon checking fertility during the coming months. 
Here again the theologians stepped in with an 
explanation which they popularised through the 
agency of the Puranas. The story in this case 
is a variation upon that given above in which 
Krishna appears as the hero. The demon is still 
Holika, but her destruction is brought about by 
other means. According to this version a holy 
sadhu, when passing through a village afflicted by 
the monster, was attracted by the lamentation 
of an old woman, and on learning that the cause 
of her grief was the impending loss of her only 
grandson, gave himself up to meditation. In due 
course he announced that Holika could be de- 
stroyed in one way only, namely, by being made 
to listen to vile and obscene language. The 
people took the holy mendicant at his word, and 
when Holika arrived to demand her due she was 
ereeted with such a chorus of filthy abuse that 
she straightway fell down and expired. 

I have laid stress in the previous chapter upon 
the reality and the strength of the religious 


268 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


impulse which has covered the face of the land 
with great temples. A question which, at first 
sight, is a puzzling one will probably arise as 
a result of what has been written above of the 
uncouth nature of the idols at one of the most 
famous and most popular temples in India, and 
of the primitive character of the great festival 
which has been described. The reader will be 
inclined to ask whether, in her long quest after 
God, India has not failed ; whether the road she 
has taken has not led her into a morass of idolatry 
and superstition rather than to the threshold of 
the divine. In a country in which the percentage 
of illiteracy is so high as it is in India, the gulf 
between the intellectuals and the masses is a wide 
one. I have vivid recollections of a ceremony 
which I once attended at a temple in the south 
of India, at the invitation and in the company 
of a cultured Brahman gentleman. The images 
were brought out from their shrines in the build- 
ing and were carried in procession round the 
temple in the sight of a large crowd. The pro- 
cession was headed by a company of nautch 
girls dancing, and was brought up by a choir of 
temple attendants, chanting passages from the 
holy books. As darkness fell and the moon rose 
over the still water of the temple tank, the whole 
scene assumed a picturesqueness which it would 
scarcely have worn in the broad light of day, for 
the light from the torches served to hide rather 
than reveal the tawdriness of the trappings. 
My host, I think, divined something of what 
was passing in my mind. “ The display is for 
the people,’ he said; and we left it at that. 
He was himself one of the highly intellectual and 
cultured Brahmans of southern India, the type 
of man whose mind penetrates without difficulty 
the complexities of the Vedanta philosophy in its 
most intellectual form, as set forth, for example, 


POPULAR HINDUISM 269 


by Sankara, the great commentator of the eighth 
century A.D. Elsewhere I have described the 
attitude of a famous priest and hermit of the 
eastern Himalayas towards this same question, 
and have set forth his frank avowal that all 
formalism in religion was meaningless to those 
who had risen above the level of the compara- 
tively primitive, and was of value only in so far 
as it drew the minds of the uneducated from 
earth towards heaven. If, then, in India one 
finds side by side not merely different races and 
different creeds, but also, as has been pointed 
out in Chapter XVII., different epochs, is it 
. surprising that one should also find widely differ- 
ing stages in the evolution of religious thought ? 
It is one of the main contentions of the Vedanta 
philosophy, as I shall hope to show in another 
volume, that all human truth is relative and 
not absolute; that as the veil of ignorance is 
eradually drawn aside, the truth of yesterday is 
seen to be but partial truth in the greater light 
of the knowledge of to-day. Will not the truth 
of to-day in its turn be seen to be relative only 
in the still greater light which will assuredly be 
shed upon the darkness of the human mind by the 
ereater knowledge of to-morrow? The Indian 
intellectual of to-day perceives the relative nature 
of that which appears as truth to the masses of 
his less highly developed fellow-countrymen. I 
asked a cultured Hindu gentleman at Puri what 
he saw in the swinging of Krishna and the squirt- 
ing of red liquid at the Holi festival which I 
have described. His reply was both interesting 
and instructive. For him the forward and back- 
ward motion of the swing stood for the life-giving 
action of the systole and diastole of the heart, and 
was emblematic of the function of the Deity as 
Preserver of mankind. In the squirting of the 
red liquid he saw the offering of one’s life-blood 


270 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


to God. Similarly there is the authority of Mr. 
Havell for the statement that while the lingam 
of Shiva is undoubtedly a phallic emblem in the 
eyes of the masses, “to the cultured Hindu it is 
only suggestive of the philosophic concept that 
God is a point, formless, or that He is the One.”’ ! 

There is no more marked characteristic of 
the cultured Hindu than that of idealising the 
formalism of popular Hinduism, of seeing in the 
stories around which have sprung up the manifold 
modes of popular worship great spiritual truths 
clothed in a form suitable to the understanding of 
the people to whom they were first presented. 
No legend has excited greater discussion than 
that of the early days of the life of Krishna, when 
he is represented as playing with the gopis? in the 
meadows of Brindaban, out of which arose the 
story of the love of Radha, the daughter of a king, 
already given in lawful wedlock to a husband of 
suitable standing, for Krishna. The story is a 
simple one of love at first sight. Shown a picture 
of Krishna by one of her attendants, Radha felt 
a strange emotion and experienced an overpower- 
ing desire to see the original. The sight of him 
was in due course vouchsafed to her, standing 
with his flute in the shade of a kadamba tree. 
Meetings follow, and the emotions of the lovers 
form the subject of a considerable literature. The 
story makes an immense appeal to the cultured 
Vaishnava even to-day. I have in my possession 
a painting by one of the most inspired of the 
younger generation of Indian artists—himself a 
devout Vaishnava—representing Radha, discon- 
solate, caressing the trunk of the kadamba tree. 
The picture is full of pathos ; one sees written on 
her features and in her gesture a great yearning 
after that for the attainment of which she would 


1 ** The Ideals of Indian Art,” by E. B. Havell. 
2 Gopis=milkmaids. See forward the quotation from Dr. Coomara- 
swamy’s ‘‘ Sahaja.” 


POPULAR HINDUISM 271 


sacrifice all else. And this, indeed, is the mean- 
ing which the cultured Vaishnava of to-day reads 
into this centuries-old story. He sees in it a 
representation in terms of emotion of the agelong 
ideal of India, that of renunciation, presented so 
often in India in other terms—those of asceticism. 
‘** A person who yearns for God shall not care for 
home, for fame, or for any earthly consideration ; 
he must renounce all. This idea is best expressed 
by the allegory of Radha and Krishna; for a 
woman, peculiarly situated as she is in Hindu 
society, cannot contract love with a stranger 
without risking all that is near and dear to her. 
The spirit of martyrdom in this love is kindred 
to that for which the soul of a true devotee is 
always ready.” 1 Or, as another writer has put 
it, ““ Because the stages of human love reflect the 
stations of spiritual evolution, it is said that the 
relationship of hero and heroine reveals an 
esoteric meaning, and this truth has been made 
the basis of the well-known allegories of Radha 
and Krishna, which are the dominant motif of 
mediaeval Hinduism. Here, illicit love becomes 
the very type of salvation; for in India, where 
social convention is so strict, such a love involves 
the surrender of all that the world values, and 
sometimes of life itself... . All this is an 
allegory—-the reflection of reality in the mirror of 
illusion. This reality is the inner life, where 
Krishna is the Lord, the milkmaids are the souls 
of men, and Brindaban the field of consciousness. 
The relation of the milkmaids with the Divine 
Herdsman is not in any sense a model intended to 
be realised in human relationships, and the litera- 
ture contains explicit warnings against any such 
confusion of planes.”’ ? 


1 Rai Bahadur Dinesh. Chandra Sen in his “ History of Bengali 
Language and Literature.” 
2 Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy | in an essay entitled ** Sahaja,”’ 
published with others in a volume “* The Dance of Siva.” 


272 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Innumerable examples of this widespread and 
strongly-marked tendency could be given did 
space permit. The evolution of the idea of Shiva 
as Nataraja, “ Lord of Dancers,” may be taken 
as a further illustration. In Chapter II. I have 
referred to the sculpture of Shiva engaged in a 
cosmic dance which is to be seen in the Caves of 
Klephanta, and I have mentioned the bronze 
images of southern India which embody the same 
idea. I have a beautiful specimen of a bronze 
Shiva Nataraja, made by a temple image-maker 
of southern India of the present day, a remark- 
able suggestion in metal of boundless energy dis- 
playing itself in rhythmical and tireless motion. 
The sculptures at Elephanta, Ellora, and Bhuban- 
eswar are said to represent a dance of Shiva called 
Tandava, performed in cemeteries and burning- 
grounds. It is said by Dr. Coomaraswamy to 
have its origin in the revels of a pre-Aryan 
divinity, half-god, half-demon, who made of the 
burning-ground a theatre for his wild perform- 
ances. And the same writer points to the mean- 
ing to be read into this dance of Shiva. The 
burning-ground is the human heart into which 
Shiva has entered; a burning-ground indeed, 
though not of the body, but of that which separ- 
ates man from God—the illusion produced by 
false knowledge, the illusion, that is, which is this 
world and all that appertains thereto. And he 
quotes a Bengali poem addressed to Shiva in his 
aspect of the Great Mother of the universe, in 
which he is known as Kali: 


Because Thou lovest the Burning-ground, 

I have made a Burning-ground of my heart— 

That Thou, Dark One, haunter of the Burning-ground, 
Mayest dance Thy eternal dance. 

Nought else is within my heart, O Mother : 

Day and Night blazes the funeral pyre : 

The ashes of the dead strewn all about, 

I have preserved against Thy coming. 


POPULAR HINDUISM 278 


To the metaphysically-minded the bronze 
Nataraja conveys another idea contained in the 
Vedanta philosophy. A system which conceives 
of all ultimate reality as that which is above 
and beyond all attributes cannot attribute the 
creation to God’s desire ;. for desire postulates a 
want, and the God of the Vedanta is ex hypothest 
lacking in nothing. The universe, therefore, is 
God’s lila, a word which is usually translated play; 
the inference to be drawn from this description 
being that the phenomenal universe and _ all 
that there is in it is of God’s Nature, being the 
product neither of His necessity nor of His desire. 
Of this difficult subject, more elsewhere. To a 
person steeped in the philosophy of the Vedanta 
the Nataraja stands for this idea of spontaneous 
energy which is the cause of the universe as we 
know it. The idea conveyed to such an one by 
these striking and beautiful images is that of 
primal energy employed of no necessity and for 
no purpose, but providing incidentally the basis 
of all human existence. Without a considerable 
measure of familiarity with the main concepts of 
the monistic philosophy of the Vedanta it is 
difficult to grasp the ideas contained in such words 
as lila; it is still more difficult to give intelligible 
expression to them. My object here is not to 
attempt to do so, but merely to illustrate the 
facility with which the cultured Hindu perceives 
the process of evolution at work in the realms of 
thought. And no more striking example, surely, 
could be found than his perception, in that which 
has its origin in the corybantic revels of a primi- 
tive deity, of an emblem of the most abstruse con- 
ceptions of which the human mind has hitherto 
proved capable. 

It will help, perhaps, towards an understand- 
ing of this attitude of the cultured Hindu towards 
the evolution of religion if I quote the words of 

x 


274 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


an English scientist which contain views corre- 
sponding closely with those of the Vedantist. 
For when Professor Benjamin Moore wrote that 
the progress of science “ added a new beauty to 
religion, or rather revealed a beauty that was 
there all the while, but concealed by misconcep- 
tion or lack of knowledge,’ he was, albeit quite 
unconsciously in all probability, stating the 
position of the Vedantist ; and when adding that 
‘the eternal truths of science and religion were 
the same one hundred years ago as they are to- 
day, and as they will be a hundred years hence,”’ 
and that “it is our knowledge and powers of con- 
ception that have changed and not the eternal 
verities,’’ 1 he is—equally unconsciously, no doubt 
—drawing a picture of the maya used in the sense 
of avidya (ignorance) of the followers of Sankara. 


1 “ Origin and Nature of Life,’ by B. Moore, D.Sc., F.R.S. 


CHAPTER XXII 
PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 


The Physical Cause 


In the first chapter of this volume I have said 
something about generalisations—of the caution 
with which, in the case of so vast and varied a 
land as India, they should be made; of the fact, 
nevertheless, that the observer finds himself 
forming certain conclusions which seem to possess 
general applicability. A generalisation which has 
often been made is that a certain submissive sad- 
ness is characteristic of the people of India. One 
often hears the joyousness of the Burmese con- 
trasted with the taciturnity of the Indian; and 
if one travels from the plains of India to the hills 
—at any rate those parts of the hills peopled by 
men of Mongol stock—one cannot fail to notice 
amongst the people of the latter a cheerful 
vivacity which one does not recall amongst the 
inhabitants of the former. Writers upon India 
whose works are world-famed have given expres- 
sion to this generalisation—Sir Edwin Arnold, for 
example, in the oft-quoted lines : 





The East bowed low before the blast in patient, deep disdain ; 
It let the legions thunder past, then turned to thought again. 


If one searches for causes one has little 
difficulty in discovering them—physical causes, 
which are always the first to catch the eye, since 
they lie upon the surface; and, later, causes of a 

275 


276 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


more subtle kind, which are not so easily per- 
ceived because they are internal rather than 
external—things not of the body but of the mind. 
First, then, as to the former. 

In many parts of India, especially those 
afflicted with the damp and heat-laden atmo- 
sphere of the tropics, the lassitude due to climatic 
enervation is evident enough. It is equally 
apparent that man’s physical organism in its 
relaxed condition falls an easy prey to disease. 
Bubonic plague, which made its appearance in 
Bombay in 1896, has been responsible for a pro- 
digious mortality, over 10,500,000 deaths having 
actually been recorded from this cause in some- 
thing less than a quarter of a century after it 
first made its appearance. The great influenza 
epidemic which swept across the continent in 1918 
carried off at least 7,000,000 persons. 

Another form of disease to which peoples in- 
habitating lands situated in tropical and semi- 
tropical zones seem to be peculiarly liable, but 
which remained for long undetected, has recently 
been shown to be almost incredibly widespread. 
Mention of a disease known to the medical pro- 
fession as ankylostomiasis was made at the first 
Indian Medical Congress held in Calcutta in 1894. 
Its symptoms were said to take the form of 
dyspepsia and anaemia, accompanied by chronic 
apathy and a general lowering of the vitality ; its 
cause, the presence in the human intestine of a 
parasite about half an inch in length, commonly 
known as hook-worm. Sporadic investigation 
suggested that it was widely prevalent in India. 
An examination of the inmates of the jails in 
Darbhanga by Colonel Calvert a few years later 
gave startling results, the presence of the parasite 
being detected in no less than 83 per cent of 
those examined. An examination of 600 coolies 
engaged on the tea gardens of Assam made by 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 277 


Dr. Bentley in 1904 proved to be still more 
alarming, only one of the whole number being 
free from contamination. Some years later an 
investigation on a much larger scale carried out 
among the labourers on the tea gardens in the 
district of Darjeeling by Colonel Clayton Lane 
drove him to the amazing conclusion that there 
were large areas where the extent of the infec- 
tion must amount to at least 80 per cent. This 
pessimistic conclusion unhappily found support 
in the result of a systematic examination of the 
jail population throughout Bengal in 1917, which 
showed that more than 71 per cent of 12,570 
persons examined was infected. Here then was 
a sufficiently potent cause of pessimism ; yet the 
hook-worm is but one of the sinister performers 
in the grim tragedy of endemic disease played 
out upon a stage upon which no curtain ever falls. 
An even more malignant figure in the remorseless 
dance of death is the parasite discovered by Pro- 
fessor Laveran in 1880, and conveyed to man—as 
was proved by the patient and brilliant work of Sir 
Ronald Ross brought to a conclusion in 1897-98— 
by the female of the Anopheles mosquito. 

A perusal of the vital statistics of British 
India in recent years shows that of a normal 
annual. death-rate of from 7,000,000 to 7,500,000, 
from 4,000,000 to 4,500,000 are attributed to 
fever. How great a proportion of this latter 
figure should be assigned to malarial fever in 
particular it is difficult to say. But recent 
estimates of the extent of the ravages of the 
malarial parasite in Bengal, arrived at after much 
painstaking work by the Director of Public 
Health, Dr. Bentley, discloses a state of affairs 
before which one stands appalled. Every year 
there occur in the Presidency from 350,000 to 
400,000 deaths from this cause alone. But a mere 
enumeration of the deaths gives only a faint idea 


278 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


of the evil wrought by the disease. It is probable 
that at least a hundred attacks of malarial fever 
occur for every death for which it is responsible, 
and it is estimated that this disease alone is 
accountable for 200,000,000 days of sickness in 
the Presidency every year. This gives some idea 
of the damage done, from a purely economic 
point of view. Its leprous touch may also be 
traced in a diminution of the birth-rate as well as 
in an increase in the death-rate, for in the worst 
malarial districts the population shows a serious 
decline. The tragic meaning of such statistics is 
summed up in the Bengal Census Report of 1911 
in a few sentences, whose brevity detracts in no 
way from their impressiveness: “* Year by year 
fever is silently at work. Plague slays its 
thousands, fever its ten thousands. Not only 
does it diminish the population by death, but it 
reduces the vitality of the survivors, saps their 
vigour and fecundity, and either interrupts the 
even tenor or hinders the development of com- 
merce and industry. A leading cause of poverty 
—and of many other disagreeables in a great 
part of Bengal—is the presence of malaria. For 
a physical explanation of the Bengali lack of 
energy, malaria would count high.” 

I believe this to be an accurate picture. I 
am of course aware of the caution with which 
statistics, and particularly vital statistics, must 
be accepted in India, on account of the un- 
reliability of the reporting agency. The village 
watchman, who is charged with the duty of 
reporting such occurrences as births and deaths, 
is by temperament unappreciative of the value of 
accuracy in such matters. In a small town in 
Bengal an enterprising inspector who went from 
house to house to verify the returns made in his 
area found that out of twenty deaths ascribed to 
fever three only were actually due to malaria. 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 279 


Of the others, two had not, in fact, died at all, one 
had died of convulsions, one of dropsy, one of 
bronchitis, and the remainder from various causes, 
including old age. Another investigation carried 
out by an officer of the Indian Medical Service 
showed that one reported death from fever was, 
in fact, a birth (registered as a death by mistake), 
four others were still-births, five others were due 
to dropsy, two to carbuncle, two to old age, and 
one to burning. No wonder that in a recent 
report the Director of Public Health observed that 
“in Bengal the record of deaths is not complete, 
neither is the statement of cause accurate,’’ or 
that it should be on record that “‘ the term fever 
commonly used in the official returns is really of 
little greater value as affording an idea of the 
actual cause of death than the heading * other 
causes.’’’ But such statistics as I have given 
represent the considered conclusion of the best 
expert opinion after allowance for all possible in- 
accuracies has been made. 

So much for the disease in its endemic form, in 
which it gnaws ceaselessly and unrelentingly into 
the vitality of the people. But it also sweeps 
down in sudden savage fury in epidemic form, 
and marks its visitation with a virulence more 
dramatic and more immediately fatal by far than 
the steady persistence which characterises it in 
its endemic form. Here is a description by Dr. 
Bentley of a visit which he paid to a village in 
Faridpur on the occasion of an outbreak in epi- 
demic form in the autumn of 1912. ‘“ In many 
cases,’ he wrote, ‘‘every member of a household 
was prostrated at the same time, and in other 
cases perhaps one member had escaped... . 
Systematic investigatory work was difficult, owing 
to the scores of people who besieged the camp 
seeking treatment. In a comparatively short 
time over 30,000 quinine tablets were distributed. 


280 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


The mortality was considerable. In one case a 
whole family had died. Another family of eleven 
lost seven members in two months. <A remark- 
able feature was the hopeless attitude of the 
people, who appeared cowed, not so much by the 
acuteness of the fever as by the succession of the 
relapses.”? Grim tragedies such as these may well 
breed a brooding melancholy amongst those in 
whose midst they are constantly enacted. 

This brief picture of the fierce and unceasing 
warfare waged by disease against the people of 
India points clearly enough to the physical source 
of Indian pessimism. There remains that more 
subtle source of which I have spoken—the mental 
attitude of Hinduism towards human existence 
and the problems arising therefrom. But before 
touching upon this I am tempted to inquire 
whether this remorseless enemy may not be 
successfully fought—-whether in the scientific 
knowledge which is in special degree the property 
of the peoples of the West we do not possess a 
golden gift which we can offer to the peoples of 
the East. In these days, when there is a dis- 
position in some quarters in India to decry the 
civilisation of Kurope as a thing accursed,' such 
questions demand an answer. 

The discoveries of Professor Laveran and Sir 
Ronald Ross have at least made plain what has 
to be done if malaria is to be driven from the 
land. They have disclosed the cause of the 
disease and the manner of its propagation. They 


i European medicine has been singled out for special attack by 
Mr. Gandhi, the dominant figure among Indian Nationalists from the 
early months of 1919 until his arrest and conviction of sedition in 
March 1922. In a small volume entitled ‘‘ Indian Home Rule,” a 
second edition of which was issued with Mr. Gandhi’s approval in May 
1919, he wrote of hospitals that they were “ institutions for propa- 
gating sin,’ and of the medical profession that, far from being of real 
service to humanity, it was “injurious to mankind.” The whole 
volume well repays perusal, for it contains the key to Mr. Gandhi’s 
Beret nd towards the West, which to many has proved so profound a 
puzzle. 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 281 


‘have swept away the erroneous beliefs upon 
which, until less than half a century ago, all 
previous theories as to the nature and origin of 
the disease were built up, namely, that it was 
caused, as its name implies, by bad air. When 
we know, as we now do, that the cause of the 
disease is not the inhalation of bad air but the 
introduction into the blood of a minute uni- 
cellular animal parasite, and that this introduction 
is effected solely by the bite of the Anopheles 
mosquito, we perceive with certainty what it is 
that we have to do to extirpate the disease. We 
have to get rid of the Anopheles mosquito. It is, 
however, one thing to know what has to be done, 
but quite another thing to know whether it can 
be done. The destruction of an insect so wide- 
spread and so prolific as the mosquito is clearly 
a formidable task, and one which is only likely to 
be accomplished if it is found possible to bring 
about conditions which are unfavourable to its 
breeding. The fundamental question, then, re- 
solves itself into this—can an environment in 
which the mosquito now multiplies freely be so 
changed as to render it unsuitable to continued 
breeding ? The answer to that question is of 
momentous import to the Indian people. 

The mosquito breeds in water, and in parti- 
cular in small pools of stagnant water; and in 
a country which is naturally dry, but which 
experiences seasonal inundations, such as the 
Punjab, for example, the obvious thing to do is 
to drain the country so that, as the water brought 
by the monsoon subsides, it does not leave 
behind it stagnant pools as breeding places. 
Ismalia provides an admirable example of the 
efficacy of this method where conditions admit 
of itsemployment. In 1891 malarial fever in the 
town was acute, 2500 cases being reported. In 
1902 effective measures were taken to dry up the 


282 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


town, and by 1906 the disease had disappeared, 
no case having been reported since then. 

In a country which is naturally a wet country, 
like Bengal, this method is obviously out of the 
question. In some of the low-lying lands of 
Kastern Bengal the amount of water even in the 
dry season is phenomenal. In the district of 
Bakerganj, for example, with a total area of 
4890 square miles, there are 1400 square miles 
of water; and a picture of the country during 
the monsoon has been given in Chapter XII. 
As well try to dry up the ocean as to dry up 
Bengal. The problem is further complicated by 
the fact that there are three varieties of Anopheles 
in Bengal, each of which is a carrier of malaria 
and each of which breeds under dissimilar condi- 
tions. Thus the Anopheles Listont breeds in 
running water, such as small streams, and is 
found in the Duars. Another variety, known as 
Anopheles culicifacies, breeds in water having a 
mild current, and is found in undulating country ; 
while the third variety, namely, the Anopheles 
fuliginosus, breeds in stagnant water and is 
common throughout the deltaic tracts of the 
Presidency. Experiments for destroying the first 
two varieties have been in progress for some 
years ; but since the Anopheles fuliginosus is by 
far the most widespread, I shall confine myself 
here to the measures required in a war>of ex- 
termination against this particular variety. 

A study of observations made in different 
ages In many different countries results in a 
conclusion which at first sight reads like a 
paradox, namely, that in wet countries malarial 
fever diminishes with an increase in the quantity 
of water upon the land. This has been the 
experience in the case of all the chief malarious 
regions of the world which are subject to periodical 
inundation, such, for example, as the lands within 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES ~— 283 


the flood zone of great rivers like the Nile, the 
Indus, the Euphrates, the Ganges, the Niger, 
and the Mississippi. A striking example is pro- 
vided by Holland, where in the year 1748 the 
Dutch defended their land against attack by 
letting in the water. After the conclusion of 
peace the water was removed and there followed 
a serious outbreak of malaria. Not until the 
land was again submerged was the outbreak 
checked. It is only in recent years that, follow- 
ing upon the discoveries of Sir Ronald Ross, an 
explanation of this widely observed phenomenon 
has been forthcoming. 

Experiments carried out by Captains Hodgson 
and King of the Indian Medical Service, and 
described by them at the Lucknow Sanitary 
Conference in 1914, showed that the larvae of 
mosquitoes flourished in water of certain tem- 
peratures only; that as the temperature of the 
water rose above 80° F. the larvae suffered until 
at 95° and upwards it rapidly ceased to exist. 
Their observations showed something more, 
namely, that owing to rapid evaporation small 
pools of water remained much cooler than large 
expanses, a notable case in point being that of 
small hoof-marks in grass, where the water was 
nine degrees cooler than that in a large pool 
close by. Here then was an explanation of a 
phenomenon already widely observed, and a key 
to the problem of what was to be done. If 
conditions are such that you cannot get rid of 
the water, the alternative is to alter its character ; 
that is to say, to convert the numberless small 
shallow pools with a maximum of edge and a 
comparatively low temperature, which form with 
the rise of the flood level at the beginning and its 
fall at the end of the rainy season, into large 
expanses of water with a minimum of edge and 
a higher temperature. This can only be done 


284 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


with the assistance of the irrigation engineer, 
whose aim must be to cover the land with care- 
fully devised systems of embankments and sluices, 
by means of which he can hold up the water upon 
the surface of the country at convenient levels 
during the wet season, and flush the land clean 
with the approach of the dry months. By a 
fortunate dispensation of Providence the staple 
crops of Bengal—jute and rice—are crops which 
grow in standing water, so that if the inflow and 
the efflux of the water be regulated scientifically 
it should be possible not only to destroy the 
mosquito larvae and maintain a level of water 
suitable for the production of good crops, but 
actually to improve the fertility of the land by 
compelling the inflowing water to deposit its silt 
upon the fields. 

It was before the experiment of Captains 
Hodgson and King provided an explanation of 
the disappearance of malaria as a result of the 
submersion of the land, and primarily with the 
object of protecting the crops from unregulated 
floods, that a scheme of this kind was carried 
out in Bengal in the neighbourhood of the Hughli 
river at Diamond Harbour, which provides a 
valuable object-lesson. The conditions of the 
country which called for treatment were de- 
scribed by an engineer, Mr. Whitfield, as follows : 
‘For want of drainage and protection the pro- 
duction of the locality is only a fraction of what 
it should be’’; and he added incidentally, “‘ Fever 
is constantly present in every village.” For 
long, however, Mr. Whitfield’s was the voice of 
one crying in the wilderness, and it was not until 
the intervention of a devastating calamity of the 
kind referred to in certain legal documents as 
‘the act of God” that action on comprehensive 
lines was taken. In September in the year 1900 
the heavens were opened and the rains descended 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 285 


upon the earth much as they must have done in 
the days of Noah. Sixteen inches were measured 
at Diamond Harbour in twenty-four hours, and 
in all 39 inches fell in seven days. Not only the 
crops but the village sites were totally submerged; 
so that where there had been dry land and happy 
villages there was to be seen nothing but a bleak 
wilderness of water. 

The reclaiming of this watery waste provides 
one of the many romances of which the annals 
of the irrigation engineer are full. Let me recite 
the bald facts and then relate briefly the story 
of construction as it was told to me while I 
stood on the great cross dam at Diamond Harbour, 
which with its sluice- gates regulates the level of 
the water over 283 square miles of fertile land 
and wards off the influx of the destructive saline 
water which sweeps up the Hughli on the tides. 
The first sod of the drainage works was cut in 
November 1904. In June 1909 the Diamond 
Harbour sluice was opened for drainage and the 
whole area cropped for the first time. The 
capital cost amounted to £137,000. A fair pro- 
portion of this sum found its way into the pockets 
of the people of the locality themselves, for the 
majority of the 5000 hands employed upon the 
work of construction was recruited from the 
villages within the area affected. And seldom, 
surely, can money have given a better return; 
for while the people benefited were called upon 
to pay a modest sum of ninepence per acre for 
a period of thirty years, they obtained in return 
enormously improved health, excellent com- 
munications in the shape of a number of navig- 
able channels, and an increased return from their 
crops estimated at no less than £310,000 a year. 
In face of these figures a capital expenditure of 
£137,000 appears paltry. 

From the dam and sluice-gates at Diamond 


286 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Harbour I looked back over a limitless expanse 
of gently-waving rice, whose vivid green paled off 
in a light haze where it cut the horizon. The 
whole world was filled with colour—blue and 
green, blended into perfect harmony by the all- 
pervading sun. And I should have been of a 
singular disposition indeed if I had not been 
affected by the enthusiasm of the engineer at my 
side as he told the story of the building of the 
sluice and the dam on which we stood. Work 
had not progressed far when the top stratum of 
blue clay at the site selected for the sluice-gate 
was discovered to be inconveniently shallow. 
Worse still, it rested upon a quicksand which, 
when uncovered, seethed and bubbled like the 
murky matter in the pit of a live voleano—a lid 
upon a boiling cauldron. A complete revision of 
plans became necessary. Open foundations were 
no longer practicable, and 164 masonry wells 
had to be sunk as a foundation for the super- 
structure. The work was long and _ laborious, 
but by the end of 1908 was sufficiently far 
advanced to justify the engineers in closing the 
Diamond Harbour creek alongside of the sluice- 
gate, an operation which involved the construc- 
tion of a dam 450 feet long and the movement of 
6,000,000 cubic feet of earth. The season avail- 
able for the work was a short one; but pre- 
liminary work had been completed during the 
previous three years, and in January 1909 the 
first attempt to close the creek was made. It was 
a fight against time and tides. The first attempt 
failed. A second attempt, made a fortnight later, 
came within measurable distance of success. A 
dam was actually constructed from bank to bank, 
but breached on the very day of completion. The 
third attempt was made in the middle of Febru- 
ary. An army of coolies worked day and night, 
and as the river rose with the rising tides, 3000 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 287 


men kept a ceaseless flow of earth pouring on to 
the dam as it gradually settled under pressure of 
the battling waters. For six days they held the 
waters—tright up, in fact, to the night of the highest 
spring tide, when one supreme effort was required 
to hold the work against the final onslaught of 
the river. Darkness descended upon a scene of 
restless struggle. The tide rose inexorably, biting 
into the dam with ever-increasing pressure, while 
a groaning and perspiring army strove with taut 
sinews against it. Slowly but surely the earth- 
work settled until the waves washed the top. It 
was within a quarter of an hour of midnight when 
the supervising engineers were called hurriedly 
away to deal with a leak at one end of the ram- 
part. Success and failure hung evenly in the 
balance. Another fifteen minutes of breathless 
labour along the length of the dam to keep up the 
height as the earth settled, and victory was sure. 
But it was precisely the strain of the final fifteen 
minutes that proved too great. With the hurried 
departure of the supervising engineers to meet 
the menace of the leak, and the consequent re- 
moval of their compelling presence from the direct 
control of the main working party, the determina- 
tion of the exhausted coolies wavered. As their 
courage ebbed their movements slowed down, 
and finally ceased. A huge tidal-wave, sweeping 
up the stream, topped the embankment, and, to 
quote the words of the narrator of the desperate 
story, “In two minutes twenty thousand rupees’ 
worth of embankment was racing down the river.”’ 

The fourth attempt, made during the following 
month, was crowned with success. Some idea of 
the nicety of the calculations necessary in the 
planning of works of this kind in the flat, alluvial 
stretches of Bengal may be gained from a study 
of this, the Magra Hat drainage scheme. The 
water from the whole area concerned had to be 


288 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


drained into the Hughli river. But the slope of 
the land was not towards, but away from the 
river; and drainage had consequently to be to 
a central basin, whence it was trained back, along 
a specially constructed channel with a slope of 
only 4 inches in the mile, to the great sluice-gate 
with its thirty vents, the building of which has 
been described. 

The Magra Hat drainage project was devised, 
as has been mentioned, for the protection and 
improvement of crops. It resulted not only in 
a tremendous increase in the agricultural value 
of the land affected, but in a vast improvement 
in the health of the people. Schemes on similar 
lines have been undertaken since, and many more 
have been planned and await only the provision 
of the necessary engineering staff and funds, in 
the shape of capital outlay, before being under- 
taken. They are devised now primarily with the 
object of ridding the land of disease, though, with 
the object-lesson of Magra Hat available, the 
improvement of agriculture is kept in view as a 
parallel objective. 

Many years must necessarily elapse before any 
very great impression can be made upon the 
Anopheles mosquito by means such as these. And 
in the meantime effort must be concentrated upon 
the alleviation of the fever by the widespread 
distribution of quinine. It is curious that though 
the value of the bark of the cinchona tree as a 
cure for malarial fever was discovered nearly 
three hundred years ago—it obtained its name 
from the Condesa del Cinchon, wife of the Spanish 
Viceroy of Peru, who was cured of fever by it in 
1638—it has only been widely administered in 
India in comparatively recent years. At one 
time its price was prohibitive. It is said, for 
example, that King Louis XIV. of France, who 
was cured with quinine by Sir Robert Talbot in 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 289 


1679, purchased the secret of the cure for £48,000, 
and a pension of £2000 a year.! The modest 
price of the drug in India to-day is due to the 
action of the Government of India in cultivating 
the tree in different parts of the country. Tucked 
away on the hill slopes above the valley of the 
Tista river, where it flows through the district 
of Darjeeling, may be seen carefully tended 
plantations of the shrub. The journey to that 
above the right bank of the river at Mungpo may 
be made from Darjeeling on foot or on a hill pony, 
the track leading through magnificent forest con- 
taining fine specimens of cryptomerias, tree-ferns, 
bamboos, and sago palms, amongst many other 
varieties, and displaying not a few specimens of 
the pothos, a giant-leaved creeper, which winds 
itself round the trunks of trees and eventually 
strangles them. The cinchona trees are planted 
in rows, 1700 to the acre, on the hillside 4000 
feet above sea-level. At the age of ten the trees 
are uprooted, and bark and root treated at the 
factory, where from 40,000 to 50,000 lb. of quinine 
are produced each year. Across the valley, high 
up above the left bank of the river at Munsong, 
a further 2000 acres have been planted, with 
approximately 3,500,000 trees. Other planta- 
tions are to be found in Madras and in Ceylon, 
and a project for the cultivation of the tree on a 
large scale amongst the hills in Burma, which has 
for some time been under consideration, has been 
begun. 


1 For this story and for most of the facts about malaria and its 
cause I am indebted to the painstaking research of Dr. Bentley. 


CHAPTER XXIII 
PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 


The Intellectual Cause 


ONE obtains one’s first clue to the more subtle 
cause of Indian pessimism by observing the 
leisurely habits of the people. One sees around 
one an immense stock of patience, and on all 
sides a contemptuous disregard for time. There 
is no need to enlarge upon this latter character- 
istic in its ordinary manifestations. The daily 
inconveniences arising out of it are in themselves 
more than sufficient to ensure its being kept 
constantly in mind. But it is worth noting in 
passing that the complete indifference to time 
exhibited by the Indian mind is more far-reaching 
in its consequences than is at first apparent. It 
carries with it an equally complete indifference to 
order in the sequence of events. Before the 
advent of Western education the average Indian 
was constitutionally incapable of appreciating the 
meaning of the word chronology. European 
writers of history, with their passion for precision 
in such matters, have found themselves baffled 
over and over again by this trait when endeavour- 
ing to assign dates in the story of India. The 
sort of attitude of mind towards chronology, for 
which it is responsible, is well illustrated by the 
following dialogue which took place between an 
inspector of schools and an Indian school-teacher : 
290 





PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 291 


._ Inspector: ‘* Can you tell me the date of the arrival 
of Alexander in India ?”’ 
Teacher : *“‘ Three hundred and thirty-two B.c.”’ 
Inspector : “* And the date of Muhammad ? ”’ 
Teacher: ‘‘ The Hegira, Sir, A.D. 618.” 
Inspector : ‘* What was the religion of Alexander ? ”’ 
Teacher: “‘ A follower of the Prophet ”’ (2.e. a Muham- 
madan). 


Comment is superfluous. 

Patience is of two kinds. In its more ordinary 
form it is little more than another name for in- 
difference to time. The traveller may notice an 
example of it at almost any railway station of 
importance. At any hour of the day or night he 
may observe groups of blanketed figures squatting 
on the ground in some portion of the station 
precincts, which serves the purpose of a third- 
class waiting-room. ‘These are folk who purpose 
taking a journey, but to whom the idea of first 
ascertaining the time of departure of their train 
does not occur. They arrive at the station when 
it suits them, and they are perfectly content to 
spend a day or a night, or a day and a night on 
the platform, pending the arrival of their train. 

This kind of patience, which I may perhaps 
style common patience, if traced to its root 
causes, would probably be found to be due to a 
great extent to inertia resulting from the influence 
of climate. 

But there is another form of patience which is 
due far more to certain fundamental beliefs and 
tenets governing the Hindu’s outlook upon life— 
a form of patience which amounts to an almost 
complete indifference to all external phenomena 
whatever. ‘The observant traveller will discover 
that patience of this kind is an immemorial 
possession of the Indian peoples, for he will find 
it embodied in wood and stone, notably in the 
images of Buddha, both ancient and modern, 


292 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


whose attitude and expression—however crude 
their execution—never fail to convey a suggestion 
of extreme other - worldliness and indestructible 
repose. He will find it even more strikingly 
exhibited in the living disciples, not of Buddha 
only, but of all the great Indian thinkers of the 
past who have preached the gospel of renuncia- 
tion. Asceticism always has been, and still is, 
practised widely throughout the continent. In 
particular, it is the ostentatious profession of 
the vast army of religious mendicants, officially 
estimated at 700,000, who wander homeless over 
the land. At any moment, and in any part of 
India, the curiosity of the visitor may be excited 
by the novel spectacle presented by the strange 
figure of some itinerant member of one or other 
of the many orders of Indian ascetics. With 
staff and begging-bowl he haunts the great re- 
ligious fairs, and is to be seen living a life 
of studied inaction in the neighbourhood of all 
the more famous Hindu temples and places of 
pilgrimage. 

I first encountered one of these folk in the 
neighbourhood of Lake Pushka in Rajputana, 
within a few days of my first landing in India. 
The spectacle he presented did not seem to me 
to be an edifying one. His entire clothing con- 
sisted of a microscopic loin cloth. His limbs 
were shrunken and his body emaciated; and 
the general uncouthness of his appearance was 
heightened by the grey pallor of his skin, caused 
by the coating of wood ash with which he had 
freely smeared himself. He was pointed out to 
me as a Sadhu or “holy man of dubious morals, 
who lived on charity at the expense of an easy- 
going public.” I was perfectly content at that 
time to accept this estimate of his character and 
mode of life. Later on, I began to take an 
interest in these folk. After all they were some- 


bd 





Plate 23. 


A RELIGIOUS MENDICANT. 


‘With staff and begging bowl he haunts the great religious fairs. 





PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 293 


thing outside one’s experience in Europe, and to 
brush them aside as common beggars and im- 
postors was, to say the least, unenterprising. 

I have since encountered many religious mendi- 
cants under different designations—fakir, sadhu, 
yogi, sannyasi—and I am ready to admit that 
fraud and immorality are widely practised under 
cover of holiness, and that the number of educated 
men now to be found within the ranks of these 
homeless wanderers is small. Yet to pass an 
universally unfavourable judgement upon Indian 
asceticism, because of the delinquencies of many 
of those who profess it, would be both misleading 
and unfair. It is far more profitable to make 
some attempt to understand what it is that lies 
behind these outward evidences of a practice 
which is in intention, if not necessarily in fact, 
highly meritorious; and one’s trouble is well 
repaid, for one discovers in the members of this 
strange fraternity the outward manifestation of 
much that is fundamental in the thought and 
outlook upon life of the peoples of India. 

For the origin of asceticism one must peer far 
back into the dim and shadowy twilight which 
broods darkly over the thought and doings of the 
early settlers in the northern plains of the penin- 
sula, long before that which in India passes for 
history dawned to throw a fitful light upon a 
venerable civilisation wrapped in obscurity. The 
existence of a religious order of ascetics is referred 
to in the Buddhist traditions, themselves dating 
back some centuries before Christ, “‘ as something 
of which there is no recollection that it had ever 
been otherwise.”’! And the religious and epic 
literature of India shows us that from the earliest 
times into which we are able to thrust our gaze 
down to the present day, there have passed in 
uninterrupted procession across the centuries not 

1 ** Buddha,” by H. Oldenberg. 


294 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


merely persons, but communities of persons, who 
have given up home to become homeless, who 
have renounced the world and all that appertains 
to the world, that life in the world for them might 
cease—finally, irrevocably, eternally. What has 
been the driving force behind such strange 
behaviour? It is the answer to that question 
that we have to seek. 

The earliest literature of the race consists of 
a collection of hymns in honour of the gods, 
themselves impersonations of the forces of nature. 
The greatest of the gods was Indra, the god of 
the sky, the heroic but kindly deity who hurled 
himself with thunder and lightning against the 
malevolent spirits entrenched behind their dark 
fortifications of cloud, and compelled them to 
release the life-giving waters so that they might 
descend to earth in rain for the benefit of man. 
Sacrifices were offered to the gods to appease or 
please them, and the hymns in their honour were 
sung at the performance of the sacrifice. For 
how many generations these hymns were handed 
down without method or classification, it 1s 1m- 
possible to surmise, but a time came, about 
1000 B.c. in all probability, when an effort at col- 
lection was made and the compilation known as 
the ‘*Rig Veda”’ was achieved. These early works 
are occupied with the ritual of the sacrifice ; 
they contain nothing in the nature of a philosophy 
which would induce men to renounce the world, 
and it is probable that austerities were practised 
in these early days for the same purpose for 
which sacrifices were offered to the gods, namely, 
to secure their aid, for it is an ancient and deep- 
rooted belief in India that spiritual power can 
be acquired by mortification of the flesh; that 
the man who practises austerities upon himself 
can compel the attention of the gods. 

But as time went on the simple beliefs which 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 295 


Shine forth in the “‘ Rig Veda” ceased to satisfy. 
It is easy to believe that the dwellers in the warm 
plains of the Ganges Valley found themselves 
amid an environment conducive to speculation. 
The vast forests which covered the land afforded 
them protection from sunshine and storm; food 
and shelter were to be had for the asking; the 
fierce fight with nature, which consumes the 
energy of man in less hospitable climes, was 
absent. And under such circumstances man 
found both time and opportunity for meditation. 
And then upon the horizon of his meditative 
gaze vague questionings took shape. The “ how ”’ 
and the “‘ why ” of the universe, the “‘ whence ”’ 
and the “whither”? of man, these were the 
eternal problems which began to beat at the door 
of his mind and imperiously to demand admission. 
Living as he did in close communion with the 
mysteries of nature by day, and scanning the 
vast and majestic star-strewn vault of heaven 
by night, he became consumed with a passionate 
desire to fathom the meaning of things—of the 
universe, of human existence, of life and death, 
of time and space, of right and wrong, of pleasure 
and pain, of all the multifarious phenomena 
arising out of human consciousness. Inspiration 
born of such ponderings soon became clothed in 
words. To the Vedic hymns were added works 
of a different kind containing strange and abstruse 
speculations upon the nature of things to which 
was given the name uwpanishad or books of secret 
knowledge. 

This remarkable mnemonic literature, which 
was handed down from generation to generation, 
constitutes the fons et origo of the deep reservoir 
of mingled religious and metaphysical thought 
whence the daring systems of Hindu philosophy, 
which flowed forth freely over the intellectual 
soil of India during the succeeding centuries, 


296 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


found their source. And permeating the whole, 
and colouring not only the six orthodox systems 
of Hindu philosophy based upon the upanishads 
but the heterodox systems of Buddhism and Jain- 
ism as well, is a doctrine which has exercised a 
profound, a widespread, and an enduring influence 
upon Indian thought for at least two thousand 
five hundred years. That doctrine is known as 
the doctrine of Karma. Its sombre shadow 
spreads far and wide over the Indian continent, 
impregnating men’s minds with the germs of an 
enervating fatalism. Proof of the doctrine never 
seems to have been—and certainly never is— 
demanded. It is accepted as axiomatic. It 
dominates Hindu thought and is so universally 
accepted that it has been held that a belief in it 
is the sole criterion which need be taken to 
determine whether a man is a genuine Hindu in 
the popular acceptation of the term.1 It is, 
according to a learned Hindu, “ the every-day 
working belief of every Hindu from the man in 
the street to the pundit in his study, the sage in 
his cloister and the recluse in the forest.”’ ? 

And this all-pervading doctrine, which finds 
no place in the early Vedic hymns, but which 
was boded forth in the upanishads, gave a new 
impetus to, and provided a rational basis for, 
asceticism. A belief in reincarnation was a 
necessary corollary of a belief in the doctrine of 
Karma, and herein are to be found the roots of 
that more subtle form of Indian pessimism of 
which I have spoken. Let the Hindu speak for 
himself. “ That our present life is a thing to be 
avoided and that release from this round of 
births and rebirths in lower and higher orders 
of being is to be sought after, is what lies at the 
root of all that renunciation, all that self-denial, 


1 In the Census Report for 1911 for example. 
2 Rai Bahadur Lala Baijnath. See ‘‘ The Essentials of Hinduism.” 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 297 


all that asceticism ... which plays such an 
important part in our religion. Every one is 
anxious to get rid of the present condition of 
life for a better one hereafter.” And he adds 
that the practical result of this is “a spirit of 
renunciation, of self-denial, of distaste for the 
things of this world seldom found in any other 
people of this world.” 1! I once received a 
startling illustration of the tired pessimism which 
this belief is apt to induce. I was questioning a 
young Bengali who was believed to have taken 
part in the assassination of a police officer. 
Towards the close of the conversation he brushed 
his past aside, as it were, with a tired gesture 
and with the words, “ Perhaps in my next 
incarnation I shall not be born a Bengali.” It 
was the tone of the words as much as the words 
themselves which was significant, suggesting a 
complete repudiation of responsibility for his 
present lot—which was the product of previous 
karma—and the hopelessness of trying to exercise 
control over what lay before him. 

What, then, is the doctrine and how did it 
arise ? It finds no place, as has been said, in the 
hymns of the “ Rig Veda’’; itis not the product of 
a simple religious faith, but of a fierce intellectual 
struggle. For it was when the ritual of the 
sacrifice ceased to satisfy man’s intellectual 
hunger, and in its insufficiency drove him to 
speculation, that this new idea arose, and having 
arisen, determined for all time the trend of 
Indian thought. 


1 Rai Bahadur Lala Baijnath. 


CHAPTER XXIV 
PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 


The Intellectual Cause (continued) 


IT is easy enough to follow the lines of thought 
along which the early philosophers of the upani- 
shads travelled. All round them men saw in- 
equality and suffering. Whence came this in- 
equality and this suffering ? That section which 
predicated a Creator of the universe—necessarily 
Almighty and presumably All-merciful—could 
not attribute them to him. What, then, was the 
solution of this perplexing riddle ? The reply of 
the philosophers of the upanishads was unanimous 
—to the deeds of men themselves; a reply 
equally well suited to those schools of thought— 
the majority—which dispensed with a Creator 
altogether. And having arrived at this con- 
clusion, they did not hesitate to face the full 
and, as will be seen, momentous consequences of 
their belief, namely, that every action good or 
bad meets automatically with a recompense that 
is inexorably just; that this recompense in its 
turn involves the individual in further action 
(karma) which again calls forth in due time its 
necessary recompense. The doctrine of trans- 
migration or rebirth was of course a necessary 
corollary, for since men died and the automatic 
sequence—action and reaction—went on, they 
must be born again. 

That the recompense of men’s deeds should 

298 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 299 


tiecessarily involve them in further activity is 
not perhaps, at first sight, apparent. Why, one 
is inclined to ask, should not the recompense— 
whether reward or retribution—balance precisely 
the account, completing the transaction and leav- 
ing nothing over? But a little thought shows 
that this cannot be. For if this were so, whence 
arose the deeds which called forth the punishment 
or the reward ? They must have had some cause, 
and no cause could be found except still earlier 
deeds; andsoonadinfinitum. And if this reason- 
ing held good in respect of the past, it must 
equally hold good in respect of the future, for the 
future of to-day is the past of to-morrow. This 
may be tested by a concrete example. I was once 
discussing the question of karma with a Buddhist 
monk. He referred to the duties devolving upon 
me by virtue of the office which I held. He did 
not consider it necessary to discuss the causes 
which had led to my holding the office. From 
his point of view no such discussion was neces- 
sary: my tenure of office was the fruit of past 
action—a fruit, he intimated with fine courtesy, 
bearing witness to the meritorious nature of my 
previous activity. But it must be obvious—this 
was not said in so many words, but was implied 
—that the reward which I was enjoying now was 
not an actionless passivity. Far from it. Could 
I think a thought, or say a word, or do a deed 
which would not sooner or later be followed by 
some effect—not necessarily in the world of 
affairs, but inevitably upon the credit or debit 
side of my own moral ledger? The theory, in 
short, may be said to be the equivalent in the 
domain of morals of the modern theory of the 
conservation of energy in the physical sphere. 
And when one considers the doctrine in all its 
implications, one realises in what a terrible and 
remorseless net those who held it found them- 


300 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


selves enmeshed. For if the doctrine were 
indeed true, human existence must be eternal. 
There could apparently be no escape. Man was 
constrained by inexorable fate to pass through a 
never-ending succession of births and deaths, ful- 
filling the effects of former causes and simultane- 
ously creating new causes which must lead to 
subsequent effects. He was the impotent victim 
of an inflexible and automatic system. “ As soon 
as the clock of retribution ran down,” in the 
words of a distinguished scholar, “it wound 
itself up again.” There could be no real evolu- 
tion, merely repetition. Good deeds might meet 
with a relatively desirable reward, certainly. A 
man whose actions had been highly meritorious 
might for a time be reborn a god. Yet would he 
not have freed himself from the eternal cycle of 
existence, for gods, like men, are bound by the 
iron law of karma. Indeed, according to the 
teaching of one system—that of the Jains—a god 
cannot attain siddhahood, the Jain equivalent of 
nirvana, without first being reborn a man.? 

The prospect of this eternity of repetition was 
sufficiently appalling. Life was not so joyous a 
thing that its extension to infinity could be 
regarded with composure. Moreover, Indian 
imagination, conscious perhaps of the compara- 
tive meaninglessness of the picture conjured up by 
the word “ eternal,’’ was not slow to invent aids 
to the mind towards grasping something of its 
overwhelming significance. At the end of vast 
aeons of time (kalpa), it was asserted, the universe 
fell into a state of dissolution. One would have 
thought that this comparatively happy solution 


1 Professor Deussen. 

2 To speak of stddhahood or nirvana at this stage is to anticipate, 
since to do so is to assume a way of escape from a succession of exist- 
ences which has been described as eternal. It is necessary to anticipate 
further, therefore, by saying that the object of the Indian systems of 
_ philosophy is to find a way of escape, and that in this they claim to 
have been successful. 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 301 


of so perplexing a problem as that of existence 
having been achieved, speculation might have 
ceased and the troubled soul of man been allowed 
at last to share annihilation in this cosmic cata- 
clysm. But the Indian metaphysician refused to 
allow himself to be beguiled by even so alluring a 
prospect as this, from the path which the in- 
flexible logic of his mind compelled him to pursue. 
The universe might fall asunder and vanish as 
completely as mist before the morning sun, but 
there would still be a vast stock of unrequited 
action which not even the dissolution of the uni- 
verse itself was able to destroy. So the disappear- 
ance of the heavens above and the earth beneath 
was only temporary, and the cataclysm having 
been achieved, there issued from Brahman 1—the 
one eternal and absolute reality—a remanifesta- 
tion of the universe. Matter reappeared, the 
worlds renewed their interrupted race through 
space, souls were re-embodied, and the recurring 
cycle of human birth and death proceeded as 
before, until at the termination of further aeons 
dissolution again took place. Thus with a sort 
of morbid satisfaction did the metaphysicians set 
up inexorable milestones along the unalterable 
path of eternity. 

This attempt at a reconciliation between the 
two apparently antagonistic conceptions denoted 
by the words “time” and “eternity” is en- 
countered in slightly different forms in the various 
schools of thought which have become entangled 
in the maze of karma. A favourite illustration of 
the nature of time is that of a wheel revolving 
eternally, the upward motion representing the 
evolution of all things, and the downward the 
corresponding involution which sets in when 
the evolutionary process has reached its limit. 
Kach process is divided into periods. The first 

1 Not to be confused with the same word denoting the priestly caste. 


302 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


period of the involutionary process, which is now 
in full swing, lasted according to Jain chronology 
for four crores (40,000,000) of crores (10,000,000) 
of sdgaropama. The sdgaropama consists of one 
hundred millions of palya multiplied by one 
hundred millions, and the palya itself consists of 
countless years.1. We are apt to think that we 
are dealing in time on a vast scale when we talk 
of geologic time. Even the geologist must feel 
chastened when confronted with this specimen of 
time chipped off from eternity by the meticu- 
lously minded Jain. 

But though the Indian thus boldly faced the 
consequences of the train of thought which he 
had set in motion, he none the less felt acutely 
the intolerable nature of the conclusions which he 
had been compelled to draw. The net result of 
all his speculation up to this point was only too 
painfully apparent. Man was caught helplessly 
‘in the teeth of a machine which was unerringly 
moral, but as rigidly Godless.”’? Was there no 
way of escape ? Henceforth it was upon this all- 
absorbing problem—how to win emancipation— 
that men’s minds turned with fierce determina- 
tion. The desperate need acted as a powerful 
stimulus to thought. Great thinkers arose who 
declared that they had found the way of release. 
Buddha was such a one, and his teaching, as we 
know, is to-day the consolation of millions of the 
human race. Mahavira, the founder of the Jain 
religion, was another. Men like these were strik- 
ing personalities who drank deep from the great 
well of quickened thought around them, and 
fashioned from it systems of their own. But 
from the ferment of ideas which was the common 
property of the intellectuals of the time, there 
gradually emerged great systems which could 


1 Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson in “‘ The Heart of Jainism.” 
2 J. N. Farquhar in ‘* The Crown of Hinduism.” 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 303 


elaim no single individual as their author, but 
which rather grew spontaneously, to be associated 
only in later times with the names of men who 
collected and collated, rather than evolved, the 
ideas composing them. Thus came into being 
the Six Systems of Indian philosophy.! All these 
are remarkable productions, bearing unimpeach- 
able testimony to the astonishing heights of 
thought reached by the Indians of those early 
days. They contain ideas of great originality, 
but though they differ in their methods they, no 
less than the religions of Buddha and Mahavira 
—if, indeed, the word religion can properly be 
applied to doctrines which take no cognisance of 
a deity—owe their existence in the main to a 
common inspiration—that derived from the re- 
bellion of the human mind against the desolating 
effects of the law of karma. 

Since karma, or action, was the cause of all 
the trouble, the avoidance of action was the most 
obvious way of escape. But before a way of 
avoiding action could be discovered, it was neces- 
sary to ascertain what it was that impelled men 
to action at all. An answer to that question 
became imperative, and the answer that was 
found was desire. Desire sprang up in the heart 
of man. He took thought how to satisfy his 
desire, and, having done so, he translated his 
thought into action. So it was argued. Thus 
we find it stated in the sacred books that: ‘‘ Man 
verily is desire-formed : as is his desire, so is his 
thought; as is his thought, so he does action ; 
as he does action, so he attains.”” And again: 

1 The six Vedic systems are : 

(i.) The Vedanta or Uttara-Mimamsa set forth in the Sutras of 

Badarayana. 

(ii.) The Purva-Mimamsa of Gaimini. 

(iii.) The Samkhya embodied in the Sutras ascribed to Kapila. 

(iv.) The Yoga contained in the Sutras of Patangali. 


(v.) The Nyaya in the Sutras of Gotama. 
(vi.) The Vaiseshika in the Sutras ascribed to Kanada. 


304 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


*“'When all the desires hidden in the heart are 
loosed, then the mortal becomes immortal, then 
he here enjoyeth Brahman.’ It is true that 
the Bhagavad-Gita, from which these quotations 
are taken, taught that a literal abstention from 
all activity was not necessary, that action per- 
formed simply because duty demanded, and with 
no other motive, had no power to tie men to 
earth; but the very fact that the Bhagavad- 
Gita came into existence to teach this lesson 
bears witness to the widespread belief in the 
efficacy of a literal abstention from all activity. 
This at least seems to me to be the root idea lying 
at the back of Indian asceticism. 

It must not, of course, be assumed that the 
idea presented itself in a precisely similar form to 
everybody. If it had done, there would have been 
one system instead of several, and one order of 
ascetics in place of many. The danger of general- 
isation is as great here as in most things Indian. 
This can be seen from a cursory glance at the 
distinctive features of the principal schools of 
thought. 

The most literal view of what is meant by 
abstaining from action is held by the followers of 
Mahavira. For the Jain ascetic the mere fact of 
doing is a tie binding the doer to the weary cycle 
of existence. Thus the parents of Mahavira re- 
frained from eating lest, by the mere action in- 
volved in doing so, they should spin the web of 
karma more closely about them, and died glori- 
ously of starvation. So are there Jains to this 
day who, when death is seen to be approaching, 
abstain from food. Not only is a further accumu- 
lation of karma thus prevented, but by this 
austerity karma already in stock, so to speak, is 
destroyed. For this is one of the outstanding 
features of the teaching of Mahavira—and one 
dividing his teaching fundamentally from that 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 305 


of Buddha—that by the fierce fire of self-mortifi- 
cation is karma consumed. Mrs. Sinclair Steven- 
son records a remarkable case of death by 
voluntary starvation as occurring at Ahmedabad 
in 1912, where a sadhu named Chaganalalaji took 
a vow to fast for the rest of his life, and died at 
the end of forty-one days. The literal inter- 
pretation which the Jains place upon the teaching 
that the avoidance of action is the way of escape 
is further illustrated by the practice of the Digam- 
bara sect, which requires in the case of its ascetic 
members a complete abandonment of their posses- 
sions, including their clothes. The Digambara, 
or sky-clothed ascetic, must live stark naked, and 
by doing so he proves that he has conquered not 
only the sensations of the flesh, but also the 
emotions arising therefrom. Bodily indifference 
to heat and cold renders clothes unnecessary 
from an utilitarian point of view; absence of 
all emotion, including shame, renders them un- 
necessary from other points of view. According 
to this view he is no true ascetic who has not 
regained that state of innocence which was the 
happy lot of our first ancestors, before they ate 
of the tree of knowledge and knew that they were 
naked and were ashamed. 

These more severe forms of asceticism were 
condemned by Buddha after he had tried them 
and found them wanting. The way of life which 
he taught was a middle way. Those who sought 
release must find it in the extinction of desire. 
But if desire grew and flourished amid worldly 
surroundings, it was not to be eradicated by the 
practice of extreme austerities. It was to be 
killed rather by the gradual realisation on the 
part of the individual of the impermanence of 
the world and all that appertained thereto. Such 
realisation, it was urged, could best be achieved 
by contemplation amid the peace and quiet of a 

> 


306 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


secluded life. Hence, monasticism became a dis- 
tinctive feature of the Buddhist way of life.* 

Nor was an injunction to abstain from action 
in a literal sense contained in the Vedic philo- 
sophies. The main contention running through 
the six systems is that man is tied to earth by 
ignorance or false knowledge. Ignorance of 
what ? Ignorance, according to the Vedanta, of 
the ultimate truth that the self of man is identical 
with Brahman—the sole and absolute reality 
lying behind all phenomena. Assuredly ignor- 
ance of this stupendous thought was scarcely 
likely to yield to casual effort. To ponder on— 
still more to grasp—the conception here set forth 
might well demand of man a complete renuncia- 
tion of all ordinary avocations, an uninterrupted 
course of mental and spiritual concentration, to 
the exclusion of all else. | 

The Yoga philosophy, on the other hand, 
definitely prescribes a system of ascetic discipline 
for the purpose of obtaining the greatest possible 
concentration of thought. The Yogi, by constant 
discipline of his body, aims at the complete sub- 
jugation of the senses, so that he becomes in- 
different to pain and pleasure, heat and cold, 
hunger and thirst. Success in this respect is not, 
however, the object which he has in view, but the 
means by which the object may be attained. 
And the object is again the destruction of ignor- 
ance. In this case it is ignorance of the difference 
between the seer and that which is seen, the 
subject and object, the self and the phenomenal 
universe. 

The Yogis have become famous in popular 
estimation by reason of the supernatural powers 
with which they have been credited, and which 
they are supposed to have acquired as a result 


1 I have dealt with Buddhism at some length elsewhere. See 
** Lands of the Thunderbolt.” 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 307 


of the complete control which they obtain over 
the body. Stories of miracles performed by them 
abound. But it would be a mistake to suppose 
that the manifestation of supernatural powers 
was more than incidental to the career of the 
true Yogi. The sole aim and object of the 
followers of Patanjali was the severance of the 
ties which bound the soul to earth, and that 
severance could only be effected by the acquisition 
of true knowledge. Such knowledge was accom- 
panied by a complete cessation of desire, and 
the bonds of karma were thenceforth loosed. 
** Though, as a rule, whatever a man does has its 
results, whether good or bad, the act of a Yogi,”’ 
we are told, “‘is neither black nor white; it 
produces no fruit, because it is performed without » 
any desire.” } 

This, the annihilation of desire, is the great 
teaching common to all the religions and all the 
systems which the intellectual genius of India has 
given to the world. It is the essence of the 
wisdom of the East. It is summed up concisely 
in the words of the Bhagavad-Gita in passages 
like the following : 


Whose works are all free from the moulding of 
desire, whose actions are burned up by the fire of 
wisdom, him the wise have called a sage. 

Having abandoned attachment to the fruit of action, 
always content, nowhere seeking refuge, he is not doing 
anything although doing actions. 

Hoping for naught, his mind and self, controlled, 
having abandoned all greed, performing action by the 
body alone, he doth not commit sin. 

Of one with attachment dead, harmonious, with his 
thoughts established in wisdom, his works sacrifices, all 
action melts away.? 


It may now be asked: “If life and death, 


sorrow and joy, tears and laughter, and every- 


1 Max Miiller. 
2 From Mrs. A. Besant’s translation of the Bhagavad-Gita. 


xX 2 


308 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


thing else that comes within the compass of 
human experience, are the fruit of previous 
actions, how and when did the earliest of these 
actions or causes arise ?”’ To that question we 
are vouchsafed no answer. The nearest approach 
to an answer is to be found in the daring theory 
propounded by Sankara, the famous commentator 
on the Vedanta Sutras of Badarayana. His 
doctrine was an uncompromising monism. There 
was one absolute reality, and one only—Brahman. 
All else was unreal. The whole phenomenal 
universe was maya—illusion—and the conception 
of the in reality non-existing universe was due to 
ignorance (avidya). This might be said in a 
sense to answer the question, since if the world 
and all that was therein was nothing but a cosmic 
fantasy—a dream obscuring for an infinitesimal 
moment the absolute knowledge of Brahman and 
passing away again with the return of complete 
knowledge—no first cause would be required. 
But this in reality does not get over the difficulty, 
it merely postpones it, for we are still left without 
an explanation of the origin and cause of the 
ignorance (avidya) which is responsible for the 
illusion of the universe. Here we seek in vain for 
an answer—and when one thinks of it, necessarily 
so. We have travelled back step by step towards 
the beginning of things, and we have reached a 
point beyond which a finite understanding cannot 
go. As well may the human mind conditioned 
by time and space endeavour to grasp the mean- 
ing of eternity. So we must rest content and 
cease striving after the unattainable. 

All great religions have laid stress upon the 
permanence—and, consequently, the reality—of 
the spiritual as compared with the impermanence 
of the physical or phenomenal universe. Chris- 
tianity provides a striking example of this teaching 
in the words of Our Lord, ‘‘ Before Abraham was 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 309 


I AM.” But no philosophy of East or West has 
gone further in asserting the impermanence and, 
therefore, the unreality of the material universe 
as compared with the permanence and, therefore, 
the absolute reality of that which lies behind it 
than the Vedanta as set forth by Sankara. He 
realised the almost insuperable difficulties which 
stood in the way of his teaching obtaining any 
general acceptance; and he faced the situation 
with characteristic courage and ingenuity. He 
granted the actual existence of phenomena for 
those who had not reached the altitude of thought 
necessary for the understanding of ultimate 
truth. To the dreamers, the dream was real ; 
and in their case he even granted the existence 
of a God or Lord, corresponding to the mono- 
theistic conception of a personal God. 

But, singular though he be in the iconoclastic 
severity of his teaching, it is, as it seems to me, the 
fact that he carried his reasoning further than 
others that differentiates him from those whose 
beliefs have been inspired by a similar ideal. 
There is something akin to the Vedanta philo- 
sophy of Sankara, surely, in the idealism of Bishop 
Berkeley. 

Bishop Berkeley proved step by step to his own 
complete satisfaction that matter in the ordinary 
acceptance of the word did not exist. Colour, 
extension, sound, motion—all the attributes with 
which we clothe the objects which we perceive all 
round us, exist only in the mind. Were there no 
perceiving mind, all these objects would cease to 
exist. In other words, there is no such thing as 
matter as a-thing-in-itself. Then when I cease to 
perceive the trees in my garden, do they cease to 
exist, one naturally inquires ? Not at all, replies 
the Bishop, they are still perceived by other 
minds. But if all men ceased to perceive the 
trees in my garden would they then cease to 


310 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


exist ? Certainly not, we are told once more, 
they are still perceived by the all-pervading mind 
—the mind of God. The universe and all that 
is in it are merely ideas in the eternal mind of 
God, and are reflected by His will in the minds 
of men. 

Berkeley, of course, assumed a plurality of 
minds. Sankara’s conception of one uncondi- 
tioned reality—-Brahman—finds no place in his 
philosophy ; and in this respect his ideas find a 
closer analogy in the Samkhya philosophy of 
Kapila, where the real eternal spirit correspond- 
ing to Brahman of the Vedanta, and known as 
Purushu, is not one but many. But the Samkhya 
system assumes something separate from Purushu, 
which corresponds to matter, and which is the 
basis of the phenomenal universe, but which at 
the same time only operates when perceived by 
Purushu, the eternal subject. In this case the 
universe is not explained as being due to ignorance 
in the sense in which the word is used in the 
Vedanta, but to the failure of Purushu to dis- 
criminate between itself and the whole gamut of 
sensations which it perceives, summed up by the 
word Prakriti, which is usually translated Nature 
—the “‘ Magic Shadow-show played in a Box 
whose Candle is the Sun round which we Phantom 
Figures come and go,” of Omar Khayyam. In 
so far, then, as Berkeley’s conception of the 
universe can be said to resemble those of the 
orthodox Hindu systems, it agrees with the 
Samkhya in postulating a plurality of spiritual 
entities, but differs from it fundamentally in that 
it rejects the dualism which is the basis of the 
latter. In this respect it is closer to the Vedanta 
of Sankara; but it parts company with it when, 
under the influence of the famous commentator 
of the eighth century, it assumes its rigorously 
monistic character. There is, however, another 


PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 311 


interpretation of the Vedanta Sutras, of which the 
most famous exponent is Ramanuja, a great 
commentator of the twelfth century; and it is 
to the Vedanta as explained by Ramanuja that 
the conception of Bishop Berkeley is most closely 
related. The philosophy of Ramanuja is monistic 
in the sense that it rejects the dualism of the 
Samkhya. But it is monism with a qualification, 
and is described technically as visishta advaita, 
z.€. “° non-duality with a difference.” The Brah- 
man of Ramanuja, far from being devoid of 
attributes, has all attributes; and the souls of 
men, far from losing individuality as a result of 
the destruction of ignorance, consciously enjoy 
eternal bliss. They are Brahman, but the latter 
** contains in himself the elements of that plurality 
which Sankara regards as illusion.’”’! While the 
personal god of Sankara exists “ only by collusion 
with illusion,” 2 and his ultimate god can only be 
described negatively, the God of Ramanuja can 
be and is described positively as an omnipotent 
and omniscient Lord of a spiritual world which is 
of his own nature. “ The characteristics of the 
released soul,” according to Ramanuja, “ are 
similar to those of Brahman; it participates in 
all the latter’s glorious qualities and powers, 
excepting only Brahman’s power to emit, rule, 
and retract the entire world.” * The two con- 
ceptions of God—those of Berkeley and Ramanuja 
—are not dissimilar; but if we seek an answer to 
the question why an omniscient and omnipotent 
being should impose restrictions upon himself, we 
discover an interesting difference in the point of 
view from which this question has been regarded 
in the case of Kurope and India respectively. 
True it is, declares the Bishop, that the ideas 
which constitute the universe are impressed upon 


1 Professor E. W. Hopkins, in ‘* The Religions of India.” 
2 Ibid. **'The Vedanta-Sutras,”” by George Thibaut. 


312 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


the human mind in a way which suggests a 
regular sequence of cause and effect, and this, 
he adds, “‘ sufficiently testifies the wisdom and 
benevolence of its author,’’ for were it not so, 
‘we should be all in uncertainty and confusion, 
and a grown man no more know how to manage 
himself in the affairs of life than an infant just 
born.” This may be said to answer the particular 
question why the Almighty has drawn up a code 
of rules which we call the laws of Nature, to which 
He subjects His omnipotence in His dealings with . 
man. It is the answer of the thinker who is 
looking at the matter from a restricted point of 
view—that of man. It starts from the premise 
that God has decreed a creation, and it puts 
forward a reason for His voluntarily imposing 
restrictions upon His omnipotence in the interests 
of that which He has created. It does not pretend 
to offer any explanation of the reason for a 
creation itself. It does not aspire, that is to say, 
to look at the question from the point of view of 
the creator. Thinkers in India have not thus 
limited their outlook. To Sir Rabindra Nath 
Tagore, for example, it seems obvious that if the 
Almighty is to exercise His power at all, He must 
of His own will impose limitations upon Himself ; 
and he illustrates his meaning by pointing to the 
limits which the chess player must perforce impose 
upon his freedom of action if there is to be a game 
at all. ‘* The player willingly enters into definite 
relations with each particular piece and realises 
the joy of his power by these very restrictions. 
It is not that he cannot move the chessmen just 
as he pleases, but if he does so, then there can be 
no play. If God assumes His role of omnipotence, 
then His creation is at an end and His power 
loses all its meaning.” } 

And it is precisely this latter consummation 


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PESSIMISM AND ITS CAUSES 313. 


Which is arrived at by so many of the Indian 
schools of thought. The Brahman of Sankara’s 
Vedanta and the nirvana of the Buddhists seem 
to correspond exactly to the expectations of Sir 
Rabindra Nath Tagore, under the circumstances 
suggested in the final lines of the passage just 
quoted. With all their subtlety of intellect and 
all their undeniable powers of clothing their ideas 
with words, the Indian philosophers have never 
been able to paint any positive picture of the 
final bliss which may be supposed to await those 
who obtain emancipation. “ All speech,’’ we are 
told, “‘turns away from the bliss of Brahman 
unable to reach it’’;1! and, as Professor Max 
Miller has remarked, “ when language fails, 
thought is not likely to fare better.”’ 

And so we are brought back to the inherent 
pessimism which darkens the outlook of the 
Indian upon life—a pessimism which was voiced 
by Sidhartha Gautama two thousand five hundred 
years ago when he uttered the first of the four 
great truths which he preached to men: “ Birth 
is suffering, old age is suffering, death is suffering, 
to be united with the unloved is suffering, to be 
separated from the loved is suffering, not to 
obtain what one desires is suffering, in short the 
fivefold clinging to the earthly is suffering,” and 
when he asked of his disciples “* whether is more, 
the water which is in the four great oceans, or 
the tears which have flowed from you and have 
been shed by you, while you strayed and wandered 
on this long pilgrimage (earthly existence) and 
sorrowed and wept, because that was your portion 
which ye abhorred and that which ye loved was 
not your portion ?”’ Sorrow and suffering, these 
are the ingredients of earthly existence to which 
the harassed mortal is tightly bound, and from 
which he is urged at all costs to endeavour to 

1 Taitt. Up. ii. 4, 1. 


314 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


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INDEX 


Abdul Ghani, Dr.,84 f.n.,85 f.n., 88 

Abdul Karim, Maulavi, 234 f.n. 

Abdur Rahman, Amir, 82, 83 

Abdus Salam, Maulavi, 227 f.n. 

Abid Ali Khan, Maulavi, 229 f.n. 

Abraham, 218, 224, 308 

Abu Bakr, the first Caliph, 219 

Abu Fazl Allami, 142, 258 

Adda Mullah, the, 65 

Adina Masjid, 229, 230 

Afghan War, the Third, 57, 61, 86, 
88-90, 92, 100 

Afghanistan, 5, 40, 50, 52, 56-59, 
72, 82, 84, 87, 89-91, 96, 223, 
224; Amir of, 56, 59, 71, 82, 84, 
85, 96; Treaty of 1905, with, 
83; Treaty of 1919, with, 89 ; 
Treaty of 1921, with, 90 

Afghans, the, 42, 43, 61, 90 

Afridis, the, 3, 47, 49, 51, 56, '70, 
72, 74 

Aga Khan, His Highness the, 238, 
239, 241 f.n. 

Agarwallas, the, 211 

Agra, 24, 25, 225 

Agricultural research, 170 

Ahinisa, 249 

Ahmad Musa Misri, Imam, 243 

Ahmad, Sir Syed, 235, 237, 238 

Ahmedabad, 151, 305 

Ain-i-Akbari, the, 142, 258 

Ainscough, T. M., 152 f.n., 166 f.n. 

Aiyar, Justice P. R. Sundara, 
250 f.n. 

Ajanta, caves of, 26, 31 

Ajattasatru, King, 31 

Akbar, Emperor, 225 

Al-Azhar, the, 234 

Alexander the Great, 10, 53, 54, 
291 

Ali, husband of the daughter of 
Muhammad, 221, 222 

Ali, the Rt. Hon. Syed Ameer, 235, 
241 

Ali Masjid, 57 

Aligarh, 235, 237, 238 


All-India Moslem League, 238- 
241 

All-India Muhammadan Educa- 
tional Conference, 237 

Amanullah Khan, Prince, 87 

Amber, 21 

American War of 1861, 158 

Ananda, Buddha’s disciple, 19, 
380-32 

Andhra river, 1538 

Anglo - Muhammadan 
Association, 238 

Anglo - Russian Convention of 
1907, 59 

Animists, 203 

Ankylostomiasis, 276 

Arab stables, 14 

Arabia, 218, 219, 223, 234 

Arabic, a classical language of the 
Muhammadans, 215 

Arabs, the, 218, 220 

Aranyakas, the, 186 

Architecture, 24; Buddhist, 26, 
27, 37; Dravidian, 25, .37; 
Hindu, 4, 26, 27, 215, 216, 255- 
258; Jain, 24, 26; Muham- 
madan, 4, 24, 54, 215, 217, 229 

Arjuna, 37, 38 

Arnold, Sir E., 275 

Arnold, Sir T. W., 22 f.n. 

Arrah, 205 

Arthashastra, 184, 135, 187 

Aryadeva, a Buddhist monk, 136 

Aryan tribes, early polity of, 32- 
84; ritual of, 32, 35 

Asceticism, 263, 271, 292-294, 297, 
304, 805; Hindu belief in the 
efficacy of, 37, 294 

Ashgar, Mohammed, 48 

Ashura, the, 222 

Asmas, 94 

Asoka, Emperor, 10, 26, 2538; 
Edicts of, 253 

Assam, 6-8, 156, 160, 176, 276; 
languages of, 10; rainfall in, 6 

Assam-Bengal Railway, 190 


Defence 


315 


316 


Aurungzéb, Emperor, 103, 113, 
225 
Avanti, Kingdom of, 29 


Babur, Emperor, 224, 225 

Badarayana, 308 

Baghdad, 88, 156, 234, 241 

Baijnath, Rai Bahadur L., 296, 
297 

Bakerganj, 282 

Bakr-id, the, 245 

Balabhadra, 259 

Baluchis, the, 42, 79 

Baluchistan, 8, 7, 40, 42, 43, 79, 
89, 116; rainfall in, 6, 41 

Banerji, Professor P. N., 138 f.n., 
176, 183 

Bangalore, 129 

Banias, in Bombay, 156 

Bannu, 92 

Barrackpore, 161, 162 

Basanta-utsava, 265, 266 

Basra, 221 

Bassein, 128 

Bazar Valley, 71-738 

Bear, 201 

Begbie, H., 204 

Benares, 210, 251 

Bengal, 3, 8, 22, 103, 104, 113, 126, 
127, 180, 156, 158, 160, 165, 
176, 205, 224, 226-232, 284, 245, 
277-279, 282, 284, 287; Bay 
of, 142, 171, 251; legislative 
council of, 211, 220; rainfall 
in, 6, 285 

Bengal District 
Committee, 140 

Bengal Iron Co., 160 

Bengal Village Self-government 
Act 1919, 140, 144, 145 

Bentley, Dr. C. A., 277, 279, 
289 f.n. 

Berar, 10 

Berkeley, Bishop, 309-312 

Bernier, 260 

Besant, Mrs. A., 307 f.n. 

Bhaghavad-Gita, the, 38, 304, 307 

Bhagirathi river, 104, 111, 112 

Bhakti, 250, 251 

Bhandarkar, Professor D. R., 34, 
135-137, 216 

Bharatvarsha, 37, 38 

Bhattias, in Bombay, 156 

Bhils, the, 3, 188 

Bhivpuri, 153 

Bhojpur, 205 

Bhubaneswar, 252, 254, 256, 258, 
272 

Bihar, 9, 21, 108, 118, 205, 226, 
227, 280, 242 


Administration 


INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Bland, J. O. P., 93 f.n. 

Blood feud, the, 49 

Bolan Pass, 56 

Bombay, 4, 17-19, 21, 116, 129, 
162, 178, 276 ; first impressions 
of, 18-17; industrialism in, 14, 
15, 150-156 ; Presidency, 225 

Bose, Sir J. C., 7 

Brahman (The Absolute), 
301, 306, 308, 310, 313 

Brahmans, the, 3, 202, 207, 209- 
212, 268 

Brahmaputra river, 142 

Brahuis, the, 42 

Bray, D. de S., 40, 41 

Brindaban, 270, 271 

Buddha, 302, 308, 3805, 318; 
burial of, 830; death of, 28-380 ; 
discourse of, 186 

Buddhism, 11, 35, 249, 258, 255, 
296, 306 f.n., 313 

Buddhist art, 53, 291; 
33, 34 

Buddhists, 23, 26, 187, 249, 313 

Bundi, 21, 22 

Buriganga river, 231 

Burma, 7, 116, 118, 120, 127, 178, 
289 

Burman, the, 3, 275 

Buxar, 103 


251, 


sangha, 


Cairo, 234 

Calcutta, 4, 15, 21, 31, 107, 109, 
121, 129, 151, 156, 173, 178, 
209-212, 235, 243-245, 276; 
university of, 185, 1763; uni- 
versity commission, 235 

Calicut, 102 

Calvert, Colonel, 276 

Cape Comorin, 152 

Cape of Good Hope, 102 

Carlyle, T., 217 

Caste, 207-214 

Cave temples, 26, 27, 254 

Cawnpore, 151 

Central Asia, 55, 184, 223, 241 

Central India, 3, 18, 118, 188 

Central Provinces, the, 10, 127, 
165, 166, 188, 226 

Chaganalalaji, Sadhu, 305 

Chaitya (chapter-hall), 27, 31-35 

Chaman, 89 

Chandragupta, Emperor, 10, 184 

Chaukidari tax, 145, 146 

Cherapungi, 6 

Chingleput, 147 

Chitral, campaign, 99 ; scouts, 96 

Chota Nagpur, 128 

Cinchon, Comtesse del, 288 

Clive, Lord, 108, 105-112, 280 


INDEX 


“Colaba, 15 

Collier, Price, 125 f.n. 

Conjeeveram, 25, 251 

Cooch Behar, 200, 201 ; Maharaja 
of, 201 

Coomaraswamy, Dr. A. K., 270 
fn., 271 f.n., 272 

Coote, Sir Eyre, 103 

Cotton industry, 16 ; statistics of, 
151 

Cow, the, in India, 19, 172, 196, 
215, 245 

Crimean War, 158 

Criminal tribes, 203-206 

Criminal Tribes Act 1911, 203 

Crocodiles, 196, 197 

Curtis, Sir George, 155 f.n. 

Curzon of Kedleston, Marquess, 9, 
65, 78, 231 

Cutch, 156 


Dacca, 118, 144, 148, 231, 232 

Dakka, 89 

Daman, the, 5 

Damascus, 219, 221, 229, 241 

Dane, Sir Louis, 83 

Darbhanga, 276 

Darjeeling, 277, 289 

Das, C. R., 188, 168, 179, 180 

Davids, Rhys, 136 f.n. 

De Barrow, quoted, 228 

Deane, Colonel, 69 

Deccan, the, 11, 21, 22, 103 

Delhi, 18, 21, 22, 24, 25, 104, 114, 
219, 224, 225, 228-231 

Dera Ismael Khan, 5, 76, 92, 98 

Desert, the, 5 

Deussen, Professor P., 300 f.n. 

Dhauli, 252, 253 

Diamond Harbour, 284-286 

Digambara sect of Jains, 305 

Dilke, Sir C., 60 

Dilwara temples, 24, 216 

District, the Indian administra- 
tive unit, 119-122, 140 

Dobbs, Sir H., 90 

Drainage Works, 285-288 

Duars, the, 282 

Dubois, the Abbé, 259, 260 

Dundee, jute merchants of, 158 

Durand line, the, 43, 64, 69, 92 

Durga Puja, the, 245 


East India Company, the, 102, 
103, 106, 157, 227, 284 

Eastern Bengal, 8, 120, 157, 170, 
282 ; description of, 141-144 

Education Commission of 1882, 
235 

Elephanta, caves of, 14-16, 26, 272 


317 


Elephants, as transport, 198, 200 
Hlgin, Earl of, 65 

Ellora, 26, 27, 31, 35, 272 
Emerson, R. W., 126 f.n. 
Kuphrates river, 220, 283 
European War, the, 158, 161 


Fakir of Swat, the, 65 

Faridpur, 279 

Farquhar, Dr. J. N., 302 f.n. 

Farrukh-Sir, Emperor, 113 

Fatepur Sikri, 225 

Fatimah, daughter of Muhammad, 
221 

Ferguson, J., 37, 256 

Fitzpatrick, Sir Dennis, 70 

Forest, the, 184-201; statistics 
concerning, 7, 172 

Forrest, Sir G., 106 f.n., 108 

France, 12, 102, 103 

Franco-German War of 1870, 158 


Gandhara sculptures, 53 

Gandhi, M. K., 151, 168, 180, 192, 
280 f.n. 

Gandiva, the bow of, 37 

Ganges river, 111, 142, 148, 199, 
283; valley, 52, 184, 216, 295 

Ganjam, 188, 189 

Gaur, 228, 229 

Gautama (Buddha), 35, 313 

Gazni, 223, 224 

Germany, 178 

Ghats mountains, 17, 152-154 

GhI (clarified butter), 209-211 

Ghilzais, the, 77 

Ghose, B. K., 259 

Ghulam Husain Khan, 106 

Ghulam Husain Salim, 227 

Gokul, 260 

Gomal Pass, 5; river, 40, 42, 43, 
74, '77, 92 

Gopuram, of temple, 25 

Gortchakoff circular, the, 63, '71,'75 

Gostling, D., 153 

Goti, 152 

Great Britain, 1, 2, 17, 60, 82, 84, 
89, 96, 102-104, 115, 125, 126, 
182, 174, 181, 182, 184, 225, 
238, 286, 238, 242, 246 

Greek influence on Indian art, 53 

Gugerat, 156 

Gupta, N., 222 f.n. 


Habibullah, Amir, 83, 85, 87, 88, 
90; murder of, 84 

Haburas, the, 204 

Hadda Mulla Mosque, the, 88 

Hamilton, Lord George, 56 f.n., 65 

Harsha, Emperor, 11 


318 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Hastinapura, 38 

Hastings, Warren, 234 

Hatigumpha cave, 254 

Havell, E. B., 17, 26 f.n., 31, 35, 
255, 256, 270 

Hazara, 67 

Herbert, Messrs. Alfred, 162 

Hewins, Professor, 1'75 

Hides, trade in, 162, 178, 178 

Himalayas, 9, 199; Eastern, 3, 
201, 269 

Hindi, the language of the Hindus, 
215 

Hindu philosophy, 295, 296, 298- 
314 

Hinduism, 11, 54, 207, 212, 214, 
215, 249-251, 255, 262-274, 280 

Hindus, the, 19, 23, 138, 209, 214, 
215, 218, 283, 2386, 242, 245, 
257; characteristics of, 19, 20, 
270-273, 290, 296 

Hindustani fanatics, the, 94 

Hirapur, 161 

Hobbes, 1385 

Hodgson, Captain, 283, 284 

Holi festival, the, 261-267 

Holland, 12, 102, 283 

Hook-worm, 276, 277 

Hopkins, Professor E. W., 311 f.n. 

House of Commons, 1 

Hughli river, 156, 284, 285, 288 

Humayun, Emperor, 225, 230 

Husain, son of Ali, 221 

Hyderabad, 26 


Igatpuri, 152 

Imperial Preference, 175-177 

India, ancient polity of, 32-34, 
182-188, 147 ; area of, 1-8, 169 ; 
British administration in, 117- 
128; climate of, 4, 5, 22; 
compared with Europe, 2, 8; 
diversity of, 5-7, 21, 24, 116, 
202 ; forests of, 7, 172, 184-201 ; 
history of, 10-12, 102, 103, 223- 
225, 227-232; languages of, 2, 
9, 10, 215; mineral resources 
of, 154, 173, 174 ; population of, 
2, 7, 169; production in, 169- 
174; rainfall of, 6, 152, 154; 
religiosity of, 16, 23, 38, 182, 
248, 252, 256, 258, 268 ; scenery 
of, 5, 17, 18, 22, 141, 148, 144, 
194, 200 ; statistics concerning, 
1-4, 6, 7, 117, 120, 124, 129, 148, 
151, 154, 155, 157-160, 162, 164, 
167-174, 187, 196, 225, 226, 276- 
279, 289; territorial divisions 
of, 8; the village of, 18, 131- 
134, 140, 141, 144-148 


Indian cotton duties, 175, 179 

Indian Fiscal Commission, 177, 
183 

Indian Industrial Commission, 163, 
173 

Indian Iron and Steel Co., 161 

Indian labour, 164-167 

Indian Medical Congress, 276 

Indian National Congress, 138, 
180, 236, 242 

Indian Steels, Ltd., 161 

Indra, the god, 38, 294 

Indra-mena, 259 

Indus river, 5, 283 

Irrigation, 171 

Islam, 4, 85, 156, 214, 215, 217- 
220, 222, 2338, 241-244, 246, 248 ; 
appeal of, to Muhammadans, 
236, 239, 246, 247 ; educational 
ideal of, 233-235 ; incursion of, 
54, 55, 223-232 

Islam Khan, Nawab, 230, 231 

Islampur, 231 

Ismalia, 281 

Iyer, V. Krishnaswami, 250 


Jaganath, car of, 260; image of, 
259; temple of, 251, 257, 258, 
263 

Jaganath Ghat, 210 

Jahan Kosha, 113 

Jahangir, Emperor, 225, 231 

Jaigarh, 154 

Jainism, 249, 296, 300, 302, 304 

Jains, the, 21, 23, 38, 249, 254, 
300, 302, 304, 805 

Jamrud, 52, 57-59, 92 

Jamshedpur, 160-162, 181 

Jandola, 100 

Jangada, 253 

Japan, 160 

Jataka tales, the, 187 

Jelalabad, 87, 89, 90 

Jews, in Bombay, 156 

Jeypore, 21, 155 

Jhatput, 6 

Jndna, 250, 251 

Johns, Mr., 61 

Juma Masjid, 219 

Jumna river, 266 

Jute, cultivation of, 141, 142, 170, 
284; industry, 15, 151, 156- 
159 ; statistics concerning, 156- 
159, 162 


Kabir, 54 

Kabul, 56, 71, 83, 85, 87, 89, 90 
Kabul river, 52, 59, 61 

Kachhi plain, the, 41 

Kailasa temple, 26 


INDEX 


Kakya Bombai, 170 

Kalamas, republic of the, 29 

Kale, Professor V. G., 150 

Kali, the goddess, 205, 218, 272 

Kalinga, kingdom of, 253 

Kandahar, 56, 90 

Kanishka, Emperor, 11 

Kapila, 310 

Karle, 31 

Karma, doctrine of, 4, 20, 250, 
296-308 

Kashmir, 40 

Kashmir Kar, 77, 78 

Kauravas, the, 37 

Kautilya, 134, 135 

Kelly, Mr., 80 

Kerberla, 220 

Keynes, J. M., 177 f.n. 

Khandagiri, 254 

Kharavela, King, 254 

Kharwal Nuts, the, 205, 206 

Khasia hills, 6 

Khassadars, 97, 98 

Khojak range, 59 

Khojas, in Bombay, 156 

Khopoli, 153 

Khost, 89 ; militia, 96 

Khyber Pass, 52, 55-61, 64, 70, 
89; railway, 59, 92, 98 ; Rifles, 
50, 57, 58, 91 

Kilafat agitation, the, 223, 243 

King, Captain, 283, 284 Ne 

Kingship, Hindu theory of origin 
of, 135-137 

Kirtyanand Iron and Steel Co., 
161 

Kistna river, 154 

Kitchener, Lord, 69 

Kochs, the, 200 

Kohat, 92 

Kohls, the, 3, 7, 188 

Konarak, 256-258 

Kondhs, the, 188 

Koran, the, 218, 234 

Kosala, kingdom of, 29 

Kosambi, kingdom of, 29 

Kotah, 21 

Koyna river, 154 

Krishna, 259, 260, 262, 265-267, 
269-271 

Kshatriya, 207 

Kufah, 221 

Kullah Gosh Pass, 84 

Kulti, 160 

Kurram valley, 64 

Kurukshetra, 37 

Kusinara, 28, 30 

Kutb-ud-din, 224 


Lahore, 21, 24 


319 


Lakhmaniya, King, 227 

Lakhnauti, 228 

Lally, Count, 103 

Lamaism, 35, 201 

Landi Khana, 52 

Landi Kotal, 56-58, 88 

Lane, Colonel C., 277 

Laveran, Professor, 277, 280 

Leather industry, 162, 172 

Licehavis, Confederacy of the, 
29, 32; Sangha of the, 33 

Lingam, the, 16, 270 

Linga-raj temple, 256, 258 

Lloyd, Sir George, 171 f.n. 

Local Self-government, 124, 134, 
1389, 140, 144-148 

Locke, John, 135 

Loi-Shilman railway, 59 

Louis XIV., King, 288 

Lucknow Sanitary Conference, 
283 

Lytton, Lord, 67 


Madana-utsava, 266 

Madras, 21, 22, 36, 116, 129, 151, 
168, 289 

Madura, 25, 251 

Magadah, kingdom of, 29, 31, 254 

Magra Hat, 287, 288 

Mahabaleshwar, 154 

Mahabharata, the, 37, 266 

Mahabodhi Society, the, 31 

Mahavira, founder of Jainism, 33, 
254, 302-304 

Maheswaris, the, 211 

Mahmiid of Gazni, 11, 54, 2238, 224 

Mahmud Beg Tarsi, Sardar, 85, 89 

Mahsuds, the, 48, 49, 75-79, 81, 
89, 91, 92, 96, 99 

Makran, 40, 91, 223 

Malabar, 18, 15 

Malaria, 111, 277-284 

Malda, 227, 228 

Malik Fakhru-d-din, 229 

Mallas, the, 28-30, 32 

Mamallapuram, 36, 38 

Manu, the institutes of, 186 

Marathas, the, 11, 103 

Markhor, 77 

Marwaris, the, 209-211 

Matheson, Major-General, 93 

Mathura, 260 

Maurya dynasty, 2538, 254 

Mazumdar, P. C., 111, 112 

Mecca, 219, 220, 223 

Medina, 221, 223 

Megna river, 142, 143, 231 

Midnapur, 203 

Minto, Lord, 288 

Mir Jaffer, 105-110 


320 INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Mir Madan, 109 

Miran, son of Mir Jaffer, 107, 110 

Mississippi river, 143, 283 

Mitra, S. C., 249 f.n. 

Moghul dynasty, 11, 22, 24, 54, 
103, 104, 225, 230 

Mohmand Corps, the, 96 

Mohmands, the, 60, 61 

Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Nawab, 235 

Mohurrum, the, 220, 222, 233 

Monro, Sir Hector, 103 

Monsoon, the, 22, 152 

Mookerji, Dr. Radhakumud, 125, 
133, 184 f.n., 1388, 147 f.n. 

Moore, A., 90 f.n. 

Moore, Professor B., 274 

Moplah rebellion, the, 242 

Moradabad, 204 

Morison, Sir T., 150, 152, 161 

Moriyas, republic of the, 29 

Morley, Lord, 1, 131 

Mosquito, as a carrier of disease, 
277, 281-283 

Motijheel, 111 

Mount Abu, 24, 216, 248 

Muawiah, Caliph, 229 

Muhammad, the Prophet, 218, 
220, 228, 224, 244, 291 

Muhammad of Ghor, Sultan, 224 

Muhammad Bakhtiar Khilji, 227- 
229 

Muhammad Beg, 110 

Muhammad Khan, 94-96 

Muhammad Shah, Emperor, 104, 
229 

Muhammadan Anglo - Oriental 
College, 235, 237 

Muhammadan University, 235, 
238 

Muhammadanism, see Islam 

Muhammadans, the, 19, 23, 214, 
215, 220, 228, 225, 226, 231, 
238, 235-237, 241-245, 247, 249 ; 
demand for communal repre- 
sentation by, 239-241 

Mullah Sayed Akbar, 65 

Miller, Max, 307 f.n., 818 

Mungpo, 289 

Munsong, 289 

Murshed Kuli Khan, 111, 113, 226, 
232 

Murshidabad, 104, 107, 110-114, 
226, 232 

Muscat, 91 

Mussurie, 89 

Mymensingh, 120, 121 


Nadiah, 227 
Nadir Khan, General, 89 
Nadir Shah, Emperor, 104 


Naga Raja, the, 37 

Nagpur, 151 

Nanak, 54 

Narasinhadeva, King, 257 

Nasrullah Khan, Sardar, 87 

Nataraja, 272, 273 

Native States, 21, 22, 117 

Nawab Nazim Hamayun Jah, 112 

Niger river, 283 

Nila-Mula Power Project, 154 

Nile, the, 143, 283 

Nilgiri, 254 

Nirvana, 300, 313 

Noakhali, 143 

North Hatia, 143 

North-West Frontier, 3, 5, 6, 9, 
11, 223; attraction of, 44-47, 
51; geography of, 40, 41, 43, 
52, 62; policy with regard to, 
56, 62-82, 91-94, 96-101 ; 


statistics of expeditions, 99,180; . 


statistics of raids, 72, 97, 98 
North-West Frontier Province, 

225; creation of, 66-68 
North-Western Railway, 171 


Ocean, as a highway, 101, 102 

Oldenberg, H., 293 f.n. 

O’Malley, L. S. S., 260 

Omar Khayyam, 310 

Omayyad Caliphs, 219, 221, 222, 
229 

Ondal, 161 

Orissa, 9, 103, 118, 160, 174, 188, 
251, 255 

Othman, Caliph, 229 

Oude, King of, 103 


Padma river, 111, 231 

Pala dynasty, 227 

Pandavas, the, 37 

Pandua, 228, 229 

Pandya dynasty, 25 

Panini, 32 

Panther, 198-195 

** Paradise Gate,’ 263 

Paraiyan caste, the, 209 

Parsis, the, 3, 15, 16, 19, 31, 156, 
249 

Parsvanath, 254 

Pataliputra, 254 

Patanjali, 307 

Pathan dynasty, 224 

Pathan tribes, 40 ; characteristics 
of, 48, 47-51, 58, 69, '76, 79, 94, 
95 

Penance of Arjuna, 37 

Pennell, T. L., 44 f.n. 

Persian, a classical language of 
the Muthammadans, 215, 234 





vO 


: 


INDEX 


Persian Gulf, the, 91 

Peru, 288 

Peshawar, 538, 54, 57, 59, 66, 71, 
73, 92, 97, 98, 223 

Plague, deaths from, 13, 276 

Plassey, battle of, 103-105, 108- 
111, 113, 230 

Portugal, 12, 102 

Prayaschita Homa, ceremony, 210, 
212 

Prinsep, James, 253 

Punjab, the, 3, 5, 9, 21, 66, 67, 
87, 88, 116, 127, 171, 223, 225, 
247, 281 

Puranas, the, 266, 267 

Puri, 251-258, 256-258, 262, 263, 
269 

Pushka, lake, 292 


Quetta, 40, 41 
Quinine, 288, 289 


Radha, 262, 270, 271 

Rahimtoola, Sir Ibrahim, 177 f.n. 

Rai Dulab, 110 

Rajputana, 3, 21, 24, 209, 211, 292 

Rajputs, the, 11 

Ramanuja, 11, 311 

Ramanujachari, Rao 
K., 250 f.n. 

Ranade, Mr. Justice, 150 

Rangoon, 129 

Raniganj, 161 

Rawalpindi, 88, 89 

Razmak, 97 

Representative institutions, 
ancient, 382-34, 132-134, 138, 
147, 211, 212; modern, 124- 
134, 189, 140, 144-148 

Rice, cultivation of, 142, 170, 284 

Rig Veda, the, 294, 295, 297 

Risley, Sir H., 208 

Riyazu-s-salatin, the, 109, 114, 
227, 229 

Roos-Keppel, Sir G., 74, 82 

Ross, Sir R., 277, 280, 283 

Rousseau, J.-J., 1385, 189, 192 

Roxburgh, Dr., 157 

Royal Commission on Decentral- 
isation, 1909, 131 

Royal Commission on the Public 
Services, 1912--14, 121, 128 

Rupnarainpur, 161 

Russia, 59, 63, 90, 158, 160 

Russo-Japanese War of 1904, 158 


Bahadur 


Sadhu, 263, 264, 267, 292, 293, 305 
Saidulla, the Mad Fakir, 64 
Sakhya tribe, the, 29 

Salsette island, 155 


321 


Salvation Army, the, 204, 205 

Samkhya system of philosophy, 
310, 311 

Samudragupta, Emperor, 11 

Sandeman, Sir R., 42, 79 

Sangha, 32, 33 

Sankara, 11, 269, 808-311, 313 

Sannyasi, 251, 263, 293 

Sanskrit, the classical language of 
the Hindus, 215 

Sen, Rai Bahadur D. C., 255 f.n., 
Pag ge 

Sena dynasty, 227 

Serampore, 158 

Seven Pagodas, the, 36 

Shafi, Khan Bahadur Sir M. M., 
240 

Shah Jehan, Emperor, 103, 225 

Shahabad riots, the, 242, 245, 246 

Shahrig, 6 

Sher Shah, Emperor, 230 

Sheranis, the, 77 

Shiahs, the, 68-70, 220, 222 

Shinpokh, 61 

Shiva, the god, 37, 270, 272; 
temples of, 16, 25, 26, 251 

Siddhahood, 300 

Sikandar Shah, 229, 230 

Sikhs, the, 48, 54, 116, 249 

Sind, 40, 171, 223 

** Siraj-al-Akbar,”’ newspaper, 85 

Sivaji, 103 

Six Systems, the, of Hindu 
philosophy, 296, 303, 306 

Smatzai, 61 

Somnath, temple of, 224 

Sone river, 199 

Sonthali miner, the, 167 

South African War, 1899, 158 

Spain, 12 

Spin Baldak, fort, 89 

Spooner, Dr. D. B., 538 

Sri Meenakshi temple, 25 

Srinangam, 25 

Stevenson, Mrs. Sinclair, 21 f.n., 
216, 302 f.n., 805 

Strachey, Sir J., 2 

Stupa (cenotaph), 27, 28, 31, 32, 35 

Subhadra, sister of Krishna, 259 

Sudra, 207 

Sukkur Barrage, the, 171 

Sun God, the, 188, 256, 257 

Sunnis, the, 68, '70, 220, 222 

Surajah Dowla, 106-110, 230 

Swat river, 42, 64 

Syed Aulad Hasan, Khan Baha- 
dur, 232 f.n. 


Tagore, Sir R. N., 185 f.n., 187, 
312, 313 


322 


Takatoo, Mount, 40 

Takshasila, 137 

Talbot, Sir R., 288 

Tamils, the, 116 

Tanjore, 25, 1384 

Tank, 5, 77, 78, 93 

Tata Hydro-Electric Power Co., 
153 

Tata Steel Works, 160, 181 

Tatas, the, 154 

Tea industry, the, 159, 160 

Terai, the, 199 

Thal Chotiali, 6 

Thibaut, Professor G., 311 f.n. 

Thompson, W. H., 143 

Thurston, Dr. E., 188 

Tiger, 193, 196-200 

Tigris river, 220 

Tirah, 48, 49; campaign, 65, 68, 
74, 91, 99 

Tista river, 289 

Tochi valley, 64, 97 

Tolstoy, 189, 192 

Torsappa, 59, 60 

Towers of Silence, 14, 15 

Trans-Caspian railway, 59 

Trichinopoly, 25 

Turkey, 85, 236, 242, 243, 24/7 

Tuticorin, 21 

Twice-born, the, 207 


Udayagiri, 254 

Udny, G., 227 

Ulupi, 37 

Underhill, M. M., 248 

Union Committees, 140, 144-148 

United Provinces, the, 8, 18, 21, 
22, 116, 118, 127, 128, 204, 225 

United States of America, 166 

Untouchables, the, 208, 209 

Upanishads, the, 17, 186, 187, 295, 
296, 298 

Upper Chindwin, 120 

Urdu, the language of the Muham- 
madans, 215, 244 


THE 


INDIA: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


Uttaramallur, 138, 134, 147 


Vaikuntha Perumal temple, 133 

Vaishnavas, the, 270, 271 

Vaisya caste, 207 

Vajjian Confederacy, the, 29, 32 

Vanaprastha, 186 

Vasco da Gama, 102 

Vasuki, 37 

Vedanta philosophy, 11, 268, 269, 
273, 274, 308-311, 313 

Vedas, the, 207, 250, 294, 295 

Vedic worship, 32, 35, 294 

Vesali, 33 

Videhas, the, 29 

Vihara (Buddhist monastery), 27 

Village Courts, 148 

Vishnu, temples of, 251 

Visvakarma, 259 ; cave, 27, 35 

Vizagapatam, 120 

Vultures, 200 


Wallace, D. R., 157 f.n., 158 f.n. 

Wana, 89 

Wandewash, 103 

Watts, Mr., 107 

Waziristan, 64, 76, 77, 80, 89, 92, 
97, 98, 100 

Wazirs, the, 89, 100 

Wheel of the Law, the, 35 

Whitfield, Mr., 284 

Willcocks, General Sir J., 74 

Williams, F. L. Rushbrook, 84 f.n. 

Woolf, L. S., 192 f.n. 


Yajnhavalkya, 132 

Yazid, the Caliph, 221 
Yoga philosophy, 306 
Yogi, 264, 293, 3806, 307 
Young, Sir M., 66, 68 f.n. 


Zakka Khel, the, 49-51, 60, '70 
Zazazwas, the, 226 

Zhob, 80 

Zoroaster, the followers of, 15 


END 





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